Architecture

Definitions

  • node: the smallest data available, it represents a content stored into the datastore. An node must contains
    • id: the internal identifier used by the datasource
    • path: the path to reach the node, the path is the external identifier to the node
    • data: a dictionnary of key-value representing the content
    • type: the node type, the node type will be used to handle the node
    • manager: the manager code which handle this node
    • created_at
    • published_at
    • enabled
    • content
    • title
    • tags
    • category
    • copyright
    • authors

  • node handler: it is a service used to render a node, there is one service per node type.

Components used

  • python 2.7: the main python version supported for now
  • IoC: it is a dependency container used to handle Element configuration and to instantiate all required services
  • Tornado: it is used to handle request and render response, Element also register custom routes to render nodes.
  • jinja: render templates.
  • unittest2: used to test the framework
  • mongodb: the main datastore for the content.

Application bootstrapping

The project used IoC to handle configuration, the skeleton application demonstrates some of its usage. The configuration files are stored in the config folder. The configuration is split into several files (this is not mandatory), each files have its own configuration:

  • config.yml: this file contains the main configuration: module to load and shared parameters.
  • parameters_*.yml: some parameters are only used on some environments, so depends on those parameters the application might behave differently (use different datastore, or webservice’s credentials)
  • services.yml: this file can contains your own custom services

Note

This configuration layout is not mandatory, you can organize those files as you want. Just alter the start.py file in order to match your wishes.

There are 2 ways to use the application:

  • command line: expose commands to produce or alter data
  • web: expose the data to the client.

The command line and the web does not use the same application instance. so make sure every thing is stateless.

Events

Most of the code is created using event to increase flexibility with how an user can interact with the Python Element. Some events are explained in the next section, other events are available on the dedicated documentation .

Request / Response workflow

  • rewrite this part to explain tornado usage

Plugins

Every things is a plugin, if you don’t like a feature just don’t enable the plugin and create your own plugin!

You can view current internal plugin in the plugins section

Bower

Elements relies on bower to install assets. All plugins use the base path resources/static/vendor to declare assets. So you should/must configure your .bowerrc like this.

{
    "directory": "resources/static/vendor"
}