Customizing TOM Templates¶
So you’ve got a TOM up and running, and your homepage looks something like this:
This is fine for starting out, but since you’re running a TOM for a specific project, the homepage ought to reflect that.
If you haven’t already, please read through the Getting Started docs and return here when you have a project layout that looks something like this:
mytom
├── db.sqlite3
├── manage.py
└── mytom
├── __init__.py
├── settings.py
├── urls.py
└── wsgi.py
We are going to override the html template included with the TOM
Toolkit, tom_common/index.html
, so that we can edit some text and
change the image. Overriding and extending templates is documented
extensively
on Django’s website and we highly recommend reading these docs if you
plan on customizing your TOM further.
Since the template we want to override is already part of the TOM
Toolkit source code, we can use it as a starting point for our
customized template. In fact, we’ll copy and paste the entire thing from
the source code of TOM
Toolkit.
and place it in our project. The template we are looking for is
tom_common/index.html
Let’s download and copy that template into our templates
folder
(including the tom_common
sub-directory) so that our directory
structure now looks like this:
├── db.sqlite3
├── manage.py
├── templates
│ └── tom_common
│ └── index.html
└── mytom
├── __init__.py
├── settings.py
├── urls.py
└── wsgi.py
Now let’s make a few changes to the templates/tom_common/index.html
template:
{% extends 'tom_common/base.html' %}
{% load static targets_extras observation_extras dataproduct_extras tom_common_extras %}
{% block title %}Home{% endblock %}
{% block content %}
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-8">
<h2 class="text-center">Project LEO</h2>
<!-- BEGIN MODIFIED CONTENT -->
<p class="text-center"><img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TOMToolkit/tomtoolkit.github.io/master/assets/img/customize_templates_doc/sciencecat.jpg" class="img-fluid mx-auto"></p>
<p>Project LEO is a very serious survey of the most important constellation.</p>
<!-- END MODIFIED CONTENT -->
<h3>Next steps</h3>
<ul>
<li>
Check out the <a href="https://tom-toolkit.readthedocs.io/en/stable/" title="TOM Toolkit home page">TOM
Toolkit homepage</a> for the latest news, downloads and documentation.
</li>
<li>
<a href="{% url 'targets:create' %}" title="Create Target">Add your first target</a>.
</li>
<li>
Customize this page by editing the
<code>templates/index.html</code> file or by editing your
project's <code>urls.py</code>.
</li>
<li>
Take a look at some <a href="https://tom-toolkit.readthedocs.io/en/stable/customization/common_customizations.html">common first customizations</a>.
</li>
</ul>
<h3>Other Resources</h3>
<ul>
<li>The official <a href="https://www.djangoproject.com/">Django documentation</a>.</li>
<li>The official <a href="http://www.astropy.org/">Astropy documentation</a>.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="col-md-4">
<div class="card">
<div class="card-header">
Latest Comments
</div>
{% recent_comments %}
</div>
<br/>
<div class="card">
<div class="card-header">
Latest Targets
</div>
{% recent_targets %}
</div>
</div>
{% endblock %}
Look for the block of HTML we changed between the <!– BEGIN MODIFIED CONTENT –> and <!– END MODIFIED CONTENT –> comments. Everything else is the same as the base template.
We’ve just changed a few lines of HTML, but basically left the template alone. Reload your homepage, and you should see something like this:
Thats it! You’ve just customized your TOM homepage.
Using static files¶
Instead of linking to an image hosted online already, we can display static files in our project directly. For this we will use Django’s static files capabilities.
If you ran the tom_setup script, you should have a directory static
at the top level of your project. Within this folder, make a directory
img
. In this folder, place an image you’d like to display on your
homepage. For example, mytom.jpg
.
cp mytom.jpg static/img/
Now let’s edit our template to use Django’s static
template tag to
display the image:
{% raw %}
<p class="text-center"><img src="{% static 'img/mytom.jpg' %}" class="img-fluid mx-auto"></p>
{% endraw %}
After reloading the page, you should now see mytom.jpg
displayed
instead of the remote cat image.
Further Reading¶
Any template included in the TOM Toolkit (or any other Django app) can be customized. Please see the official Django docs for more details.