django-simple-nav

django-simple-nav is a Python/Django application designed to simplify the integration of navigation and menu bars in your Django projects. With a straightforward API and customizable options, you can easily add and manage navigational elements in your web applications. It is designed to be simple to start with, but flexible enough to handle complex navigation structures while maintaining that same simplicity.

Requirements

• Python 3.9, 3.10, 3.11, 3.12, 3.13
• Django 4.2, 5.0, 5.1

Installation

1. Install the package from PyPI.

   python -m pip install django-simple-nav

2. Add django_simple_nav to INSTALLED_APPS.

   After installation, add django_simple_nav to your INSTALLED_APPS in your Django settings:

   INSTALLED_APPS = [
       # ...,
       "django_simple_nav",
       # ...,
   ]

3. Adjust your Django project's settings.

   If you plan to use the permissions feature of django-simple-nav to filter your navigation items based on the request.user, django.contrib.auth and django.contrib.contenttypes must be added to your INSTALLED_APPS as well:

   INSTALLED_APPS = [
       # ...,
       "django.contrib.auth",
       "django.contrib.contenttypes",
       # ...,
   ]

   If you do not add django.contrib.auth to your INSTALLED_APPS and you define any permissions for your navigation items, django-simple-nav will simply ignore the permissions and render all items regardless of whether the permission check is True or False.

Getting Started

1. Create a navigation definition.

   Define your navigation structure in a Python file. This file can be located anywhere in your Django project, provided it's importable. You can also split the navigations across multiple files if desired.

   A good starting point is to create a single nav.py or navigation.py file in your Django project's main configuration directory (where your settings.py file is located).

   django-simple-nav provides three classes to help you define your navigation structure:

   • Nav: The main container for a navigation structure. It has two required attributes:
     • template_name: The name of the template to render the navigation structure.
     • items: A list of NavItem or NavGroup objects that represent the navigation structure.
   • NavGroup: A container for a group of NavItem or NavGroup objects. It has two required and three optional attributes:
     • title: The title of the group.
     • items: A list of NavItem or NavGroupobjects that represent the structure of the group.
     • url (optional): The URL of the group. If not provided, the group will not be a link but just a container for the items.
     • permissions (optional): A list of permissions that control the visibility of the group. These permissions can be User attributes (e.g. is_authenticated, is_staff, is_superuser), Django permissions (e.g. myapp.django_perm), or a callable that takes an HttpRequest and returns a bool.
     • extra_context (optional): A dictionary of additional context to pass to the template when rendering the navigation.
   • NavItem: A single navigation item. It has two required and three optional attributes:
     • title: The title of the item.
     • url: The URL of the item. This can be a URL string (e.g. https://example.com/about/ or /about/) or a Django URL name (e.g. about-view).
     • permissions (optional): A list of permissions that control the visibility of the item. These permissions can be User attributes (e.g. is_authenticated, is_staff, is_superuser), Django permissions (e.g. myapp.django_perm), or a callable that takes an HttpRequest and returns a bool.
     • extra_context (optional): A dictionary of additional context to pass to the template when rendering the navigation.

   Here's an example configuration:

   # config/nav.py
   from django.http import HttpRequest
   
   from django_simple_nav.nav import Nav
   from django_simple_nav.nav import NavGroup
   from django_simple_nav.nav import NavItem
   
   
   def simple_permissions_check(request: HttpRequest) -> bool:
       return True
   
   
   class MainNav(Nav):
       template_name = "main_nav.html"
       items = [
           NavItem(title="Relative URL", url="/relative-url"),
           NavItem(title="Absolute URL", url="https://example.com/absolute-url"),
           NavItem(title="Internal Django URL by Name", url="fake-view"),
           NavGroup(
               title="Group",
               url="/group",
               items=[
                   NavItem(title="Relative URL", url="/relative-url"),
                   NavItem(title="Absolute URL", url="https://example.com/absolute-url"),
                   NavItem(title="Internal Django URL by Name", url="fake-view"),
               ],
           ),
           NavGroup(
               title="Container Group",
               items=[
                   NavItem(title="Item", url="#"),
               ],
           ),
           NavItem(
               title="is_authenticated Item", url="#", permissions=["is_authenticated"]
           ),
           NavItem(title="is_staff Item", url="#", permissions=["is_staff"]),
           NavItem(title="is_superuser Item", url="#", permissions=["is_superuser"]),
           NavItem(
               title="myapp.django_perm Item", url="#", permissions=["myapp.django_perm"]
           ),
           NavItem(
               title="Item with callable permission",
               url="#",
               permissions=[simple_permissions_check],
           ),
           NavGroup(
               title="Group with Extra Context",
               items=[
                   NavItem(
                       title="Item with Extra Context",
                       url="#",
                       extra_context={"foo": "bar"},
                   ),
               ],
               extra_context={"baz": "qux"},
           ),
       ]

2. Create a template for the navigation.

   Create a template to render the navigation structure. This is just a standard Django template so you can use any Django template features you like.

   The template will be passed an items variable in the context representing the structure of the navigation, containing the NavItem and NavGroup objects defined in your navigation.

   Any items with permissions attached will automatically filtered out before rendering the template based on the request user's permissions, so you don't need to worry about that in your template.

   Items with extra context will have that context passed to the template when rendering the navigation, which you can access directly.

   For example, given the above example MainNav, you could create a main_nav.html template:

   <!-- main_nav.html -->
   <ul>
     {% for item in items %}
       <li>
         <a href="{{ item.url }}"{% if item.active %} class="active"{% endif %}{% if item.baz %} data-baz="{{ item.baz }}"{% endif %}>
           {{ item.title }}
         </a>
         {% if item.items %}
           <ul>
             {% for subitem in item.items %}
               <li>
                 <a href="{{ subitem.url }}"{% if subitem.active %} class="active"{% endif %}{% if item.foo %} data-foo="{{ item.foo }}"{% endif %}>
                   {{ subitem.title }}
                 </a>
               </li>
             {% endfor %}
           </ul>
         {% endif %}
       </li>
     {% endfor %}
   </ul>

3. Integrate navigation in templates.:

   Use the django_simple_nav template tag in your Django templates where you want to display the navigation.

   For example:

   <!-- base.html -->
   {% load django_simple_nav %}
   
   {% block navigation %}
   <nav>
     {% django_simple_nav "path.to.MainNav" %}
   </nav>
   {% endblock navigation %}

   The template tag can either take a string representing the import path to your navigation definition or an instance of your navigation class:

   # example_app/views.py
   from config.nav import MainNav
   
   
   def example_view(request):
       return render(request, "example_app/example_template.html", {"nav": MainNav()})

   <!-- example_app/example_template.html -->
   {% extends "base.html" %}
   {% load django_simple_nav %}
   
   {% block navigation %}
   <nav>
       {% django_simple_nav nav %}
   </nav>
   {% endblock navigation %}

   Additionally, the template tag can take a second argument to specify the template to use for rendering the navigation. This is useful if you want to use the same navigation structure in multiple places but render it differently.

   <!-- base.html -->
   {% load django_simple_nav %}
   
   <footer>
     {% django_simple_nav "path.to.MainNav" "footer_nav.html" %}
   </footer>

After configuring your navigation, you can use it across your Django project by calling the django_simple_nav template tag in your templates. This tag dynamically renders navigation based on your defined structure, ensuring a consistent and flexible navigation experience throughout your application.

Examples

The example directory contains a simple Django project that demonstrates how to use django-simple-nav. The example project includes a navigation definitions for a few different scenarios as well as some popular CSS frameworks.

You can run the example project by following these steps. These steps assume you have git and python installed on your system and are using a Unix-like shell. If you are using Windows, you may need to adjust the commands accordingly.

1. Clone the repository.

   git clone https://github.com/westerveltco/django-simple-nav
   cd django-simple-nav

2. Create a new virtual environment, activate it, and install django-simple-nav.

   python -m venv venv
   source venv/bin/activate
   python -m pip install .

3. Run the example project.

   python example/demo.py

4. Open your browser to http://localhost:8000 to see the examples in action.

Documentation

Please refer to the documentation for more information.

License

django-simple-nav is licensed under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more information.