How to: Add more preferences

The model Preferences found in argus.auth.models stores user preferences in a namespaced way.

In order to add more preferences:

1. Create a Django app to host the preferences

2. Figure out a unique name for the set of preferences you are making. This is the namespace. It must function as a python variable, so must start with either an underline (_) or an alphabetic character. If there is only one set of preferences for the app you could use the app name.

3. Adapt the below boilerplate:

   from argus.auth.models import preferences, PreferencesBase
   
   class MagicNumberForm(forms.Form):
       magic_number = forms.IntegerField()
   
   
   @preferences(namespace="mypref")
   class MyPreferences:  # Optionally you can inherit from PreferencesBase
                         # here to get method completion
       FORMS = {
           "magic_number": MagicNumberForm,
       }
       _FIELD_DEFAULTS = {
            "magic_number": 42,
       }
   
       # Optional Meta for testing, not needed unless only used for tests
       class Meta:
           app_label = "auth"
   

   The name of the actual preference (in the example this is “magic_number”) should also be a valid python variable name.

   There should be one form per preference.

   The app-label line is needed for preference models that only exist for tests. Either remove it entirely or make sure the “app_label” is identical to the app label of your app when making a “real” preference namespace.

4. The preferences are stored in the database table row in a JSON blob named “preferences”. The entire blob is copied to the context of all views via the context processor argus.auth.context_processors.preferences.

   You can override what is put in context per namespace via overriding the method update_context(). By default the former looks like the below code:

   def update_context(self, context):
       "Override this to change what is put in context"
        return {}
   

The preferences are currently not available via the API.