README.md

Django pattern library

A module for Django that helps you to build pattern libraries and follow the Atomic design methodology.

Objective

At the moment, the main focus is to allow developers and designers use exactly the same Django templates in a design pattern library and in production code.

There are a lot of alternative solutions for building pattern libraries already. Have a look at Pattern Lab and Astrum, for example. But at Torchbox we mainly use Python and Django and we find it hard to maintain layout on big projects in several places: in a project's pattern library and in actual production code. This is our attempt to solve this issue and reduce the amount of copy-pasted code.

Documentation

Documentation is located here.

How to install

1. Add pattern_library into your INSTALLED_APPS:

   INSTALLED_APPS = [
       # ...
   
       'pattern_library',
   
       # ...
   ]

2. Add pattern_library.loader_tags into the TEMPLATES setting. For example:

   TEMPLATES = [
       {
           'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',
           'DIRS': [],
           'APP_DIRS': True,
           'OPTIONS': {
               'context_processors': [
                   'django.template.context_processors.debug',
                   'django.template.context_processors.request',
                   'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
                   'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',
               ],
               'builtins': ['pattern_library.loader_tags'],
           },
       },
   ]

   Note that this module only supports the Django template backend out of the box.

3. Set the PATTERN_LIBRARY_TEMPLATE_DIR setting to point to a template directory with your patterns:

   PATTERN_LIBRARY_TEMPLATE_DIR = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'project_styleguide', 'templates')

   Note that PATTERN_LIBRARY_TEMPLATE_DIR must be available for template loaders.

4. Include pattern_library.urls into your urlpatterns. Here's an example urls.py:

   from django.apps import apps
   from django.conf.urls import url, include
   
   
   urlpatterns = [
       # ... Your URLs
   ]
   
   if apps.is_installed('pattern_library'):
       urlpatterns += [
           url(r'^pattern-library/', include('pattern_library.urls')),
       ]

Developer docs

Developer docs can be found here.