Datarender is reusable django application that gives ability to render objects details in more generic way.

Let's follow by simple example. Assuming we've got sample "tasks" application that uses the following model:

# tasks.models
from django.db import models

class Task(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=512)
    description = models.TextField(null=True, blank=True)
    close_date = models.DateTimeField(null=True, blank=True)

Suppose we want to render it in template, for example in detail view of task object.

1. The simplest solution

The simplest usage of datarender plugin is just point fields you want to show

{% load datarender_tags %}

<div class="task-details">
    {% for value, f in task|fields:"title,description,close_date" %}
    <div class="field {{ f.meta.name }}">
        <div class="label">{{ f.meta.label }}</div>
        <div class="value">{% render value f %}</div>
    </tr>
    {% endfor %}
</div>

datarender plugin will simply create generic fields for a given model instance. That's all you need for a basic usage.

2. Using defined FieldSet class.

You can define rendering details in separate file. datarender use "render.py" file in your application.

# tasks.render
from tasks.models import Task
import datarender

class TaskDetail(datarender.FieldSet):
    class Meta:
        model = Task

Once you define it in your_application.render file, you can simply use it in the template

{% load datarender_tags %}

{% renderer "tasks.render.TaskDetail" as taskdetail %}

{# you can add "runtime data" to the constructor, #}
{# it can be everything eg. request object: #}
{#     {% renderer "tasks.render.TaskDetail"  request as taskdetail %}   #}

<div class="task-details">
    {% for f in task|fields:taskdetail %}
    <div class="field {{ f.meta.name }}">
        <div class="label">{{ f.meta.label }}</div>
        <div class="value">{% render f %}</div>
    </div>
    {% endfor %}
</div>

Once we'd created tasks.render module we can customize some things:

1. exclude & fields meta options works as expected

2) we can redefine the way how specific field (eg. description) will be rendered (eg. we want to transform description's rst to html using imaginary rst_to_html_magic function)

# tasks.render
from tasks.models import Task
import datarender


class DescriptionDetail(datarender.Field):
    def render(self, description, data=None):
        return rst_to_html_magic(description)

# the additional ``data`` param is just the ``runtime_data``
# which can be passed to the constructor (or "renderer" tag in templates)

class TaskDetail(datarender.FieldSet):
    class Meta:
        model = Task

    description = DescriptionDetail()

3. we can create our own additional field

# tasks.render
from tasks.models import Task
import datarender


class IsClosed(datarender.Field):
    def get(self, task, data=None):
        return task.is_closed()

    def render(self, isclosed, data=None):
        return "Closed" if isclosed else "Not closed"


class TaskDetail(datarender.FieldSet):
    class Meta:
        model = Task

    is_closed = IsClosed()

• nosetest for tests