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Datasette 0.14: customization edition

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@simonw simonw released this 10 Dec 01:41
· 2674 commits to main since this release
0.14
2edc652

The theme of this release is customization: Datasette now allows every aspect of its presentation to be customized either using additional CSS or by providing entirely new templates.

Datasette's metadata.json format has also been expanded, to allow per-database and per-table metadata. A new datasette skeleton command can be used to generate a skeleton JSON file ready to be filled in with per-database and per-table details.

The metadata.json file can also be used to define canned queries, as a more powerful alternative to SQL views.

  • extra_css_urls/extra_js_urls in metadata

    A mechanism in the metadata.json format for adding custom CSS and JS urls.

    Create a metadata.json file that looks like this:

    {
    "extra_css_urls": [
        "https://simonwillison.net/static/css/all.bf8cd891642c.css"
    ],
    "extra_js_urls": [
        "https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.2.1.slim.min.js"
    ]
}

    Then start datasette like this:

    datasette mydb.db --metadata=metadata.json

    The CSS and JavaScript files will be linked in the <head> of every page.

    You can also specify a SRI (subresource integrity hash) for these assets:

    {
    "extra_css_urls": [
        {
            "url": "https://simonwillison.net/static/css/all.bf8cd891642c.css",
            "sri": "sha384-9qIZekWUyjCyDIf2YK1FRoKiPJq4PHt6tp/ulnuuyRBvazd0hG7pWbE99zvwSznI"
        }
    ],
    "extra_js_urls": [
        {
            "url": "https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.2.1.slim.min.js",
            "sri": "sha256-k2WSCIexGzOj3Euiig+TlR8gA0EmPjuc79OEeY5L45g="
        }
    ]
}

    Modern browsers will only execute the stylesheet or JavaScript if the SRI hash matches the content served. You can generate hashes using https://www.srihash.org/

  • Auto-link column values that look like URLs (#153)

  • CSS styling hooks as classes on the body (#153)

    Every template now gets CSS classes in the body designed to support custom styling.

    The index template (the top level page at /) gets this:

    <body class="index">

    The database template (/dbname/) gets this:

    <body class="db db-dbname">

    The table template (/dbname/tablename) gets:

    <body class="table db-dbname table-tablename">

    The row template (/dbname/tablename/rowid) gets:

    <body class="row db-dbname table-tablename">

    The db-x and table-x classes use the database or table names themselves IF they are valid CSS identifiers. If they aren't, we strip any invalid characters out and append a 6 character md5 digest of the original name, in order to ensure that multiple tables which resolve to the same stripped character version still have different CSS classes.

    Some examples (extracted from the unit tests):

    "simple" => "simple"
"MixedCase" => "MixedCase"
"-no-leading-hyphens" => "no-leading-hyphens-65bea6"
"_no-leading-underscores" => "no-leading-underscores-b921bc"
"no spaces" => "no-spaces-7088d7"
"-" => "336d5e"
"no $ characters" => "no--characters-59e024"

  • datasette --template-dir=mytemplates/ argument

    You can now pass an additional argument specifying a directory to look for custom templates in.

    Datasette will fall back on the default templates if a template is not found in that directory.

  • Ability to over-ride templates for individual tables/databases.

    It is now possible to over-ride templates on a per-database / per-row or per-table basis.

    When you access e.g. /mydatabase/mytable Datasette will look for the following:

    - table-mydatabase-mytable.html
- table.html

    If you provided a --template-dir argument to datasette serve it will look in that directory first.

    The lookup rules are as follows:

    Index page (/):
    index.html

Database page (/mydatabase):
    database-mydatabase.html
    database.html

Table page (/mydatabase/mytable):
    table-mydatabase-mytable.html
    table.html

Row page (/mydatabase/mytable/id):
    row-mydatabase-mytable.html
    row.html

    If a table name has spaces or other unexpected characters in it, the template filename will follow the same rules as our custom <body> CSS classes - for example, a table called "Food Trucks" will attempt to load the following templates:

    table-mydatabase-Food-Trucks-399138.html
table.html

    It is possible to extend the default templates using Jinja template inheritance. If you want to customize EVERY row template with some additional content you can do so by creating a row.html template like this:

    {% extends "default:row.html" %}

{% block content %}
<h1>EXTRA HTML AT THE TOP OF THE CONTENT BLOCK</h1>
<p>This line renders the original block:</p>
{{ super() }}
{% endblock %}

  • --static option for datasette serve (#160)

    You can now tell Datasette to serve static files from a specific location at a specific mountpoint.

    For example:

    datasette serve mydb.db --static extra-css:/tmp/static/css

    Now if you visit this URL:

    http://localhost:8001/extra-css/blah.css

    The following file will be served:

    /tmp/static/css/blah.css

  • Canned query support.

    Named canned queries can now be defined in metadata.json like this:

    {
    "databases": {
        "timezones": {
            "queries": {
                "timezone_for_point": "select tzid from timezones ..."
            }
        }
    }
}

    These will be shown in a new "Queries" section beneath "Views" on the database page.

  • New datasette skeleton command for generating metadata.json (#164)

  • metadata.json support for per-table/per-database metadata (#165)

    Also added support for descriptions and HTML descriptions.

    Here's an example metadata.json file illustrating custom per-database and per-table metadata:

    {
    "title": "Overall datasette title",
    "description_html": "This is a <em>description with HTML</em>.",
    "databases": {
        "db1": {
            "title": "First database",
            "description": "This is a string description & has no HTML",
            "license_url": "http://example.com/",
        "license": "The example license",
            "queries": {
              "canned_query": "select * from table1 limit 3;"
            },
            "tables": {
                "table1": {
                    "title": "Custom title for table1",
                    "description": "Tables can have descriptions too",
                    "source": "This has a custom source",
                    "source_url": "http://example.com/"
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

  • Renamed datasette build command to datasette inspect (#130)

  • Upgrade to Sanic 0.7.0 (#168)

    https://github.com/channelcat/sanic/releases/tag/0.7.0

  • Package and publish commands now accept --static and --template-dir

    Example usage:

    datasette package --static css:extra-css/ --static js:extra-js/ \
  sf-trees.db --template-dir templates/ --tag sf-trees --branch master

    This creates a local Docker image that includes copies of the templates/, extra-css/ and extra-js/ directories. You can then run it like this:

    docker run -p 8001:8001 sf-trees

    For publishing to Zeit now:

    datasette publish now --static css:extra-css/ --static js:extra-js/ \
  sf-trees.db --template-dir templates/ --name sf-trees --branch master

  • HTML comment showing which templates were considered for a page (#171)

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