Django Breadcrumbs

django-breadcrumbs is a breadcrumb system to Django framework that allow you to add custom breadcrumbs for simple views, generic views and support Django FlatPages app.

It works as a pluggable middleware that add a breadcrumbs callable/iterable in your request object, allowing you to set breadcrumbs (one or more) in each view accepting objects, lists or tuples added from request.breadcrumbs and is iterable, easy to use in templates providing a object with name and url attributes.

Django versions support.

Breadcrumbs support 1.3.x and 1.4.x releases of Django. Django 1.2.x support was dropped in django-breadcrumbs-1.1.3.

My support will follow Django policy.

#1 - Install django-breadcrumbs

Add breadcrumbs.middleware.BreadcrumbsMiddleware to your MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES and breadcrumbs to your INSTALLED_APPS.

The middleware store breadcrumbs in request, and the app is needed to enable Django signals in breadcrumbs app.

Also, if you did't put request context processor on yours TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS, add it, ex:

TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS = (
    'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
    'django.core.context_processors.debug',
    'django.core.context_processors.i18n',
    'django.core.context_processors.media',
    'django.core.context_processors.static',
    'django.core.context_processors.tz',
    'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',
    'django.core.context_processors.request'
)

#2 - Adding breadcrumbs

To add breadcrumbs you just need to call request.breadcrumbs('Title',url), ex:

def about(request):
	request.breadcrumbs(_("About"),request.path_info)
	...

def generic_crud_view(request,model,action):
	"""
	model = model name
	action = action name
	"""

	request.breadcrumbs([
		(_(model.title()),'/crud/%s' % model),
		(_('%s %s') % (action.title(),model.title()),'/crud/%s/%s' % (model,action)),
	])

	...

All modes of add a breadcrumb:

# one by one
request.breadcrumbs( name, url )

# various tuples/lists
request.breadcrumbs( ( (name1, url1), (name2, url2), (name3, url3), ...,) )
request.breadcrumbs( [ [name1, url1], [name2, url2], [name3, url3], ...] )

# objects with attributes name and url in list / tuple format:
request.breadcrumbs( ( obj1, obj2, obj3, obj4, ......) )
request.breadcrumbs( [ obj1, obj2, obj3, obj4, ......] )

Note: You can use request.breadcrumbs safely in any middleware after BreadcrumbsMiddleware or any place where you have request object after BreadcrumbsMiddleware are processed

#3 - Enable FlatPages + Breadcrumbs

FlatPages is a app that allow user create urls with static content and a title. But create breadcrumbs for this kind of 'unknow' url path isn't fun at all, so I modified FlatpageFallbackMiddleware to fill breadcrumbs for each flat page in path.

Is really easy to use, just add breadcrumbs.middleware.FlatpageFallbackMiddleware in your MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES after BreadcrumbsMiddleware and remove Django FlatpageFallbackMiddleware. Now you flat pages will be in breadcrumbs too.

FlatpageFallbackMiddleware will call breadcrumbs.views.flatpage, that as bonus, cache results of FlatPage models, avoiding DB in every request, and in every part of breadcrumb.

Flatpages in urls.py.

Django also supports Flatpages in urls.py, as doc in http://goo.gl/iCvf3 show. To use this way, do something like:

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^pages/', include('breadcrumbs.urls')),
)

urlpatterns += patterns('breadcrumbs.views',
    (r'^pages2/(?P<url>.*)$', 'flatpage'),
)

urlpatterns += patterns('breadcrumbs.views',
    url(r'^license/$', 'flatpage', {'url': '/flat04/'}, name='license'),
)

#4 - Using in templates

To use breadcrumbs in template, only that you need is iterate over breadcrumbs, example:

{% for breadcrumb in request.breadcrumbs %}
<a href="{{ breadcrumb.url }}">{{ breadcrumb.name }}</a>{% if not forloop.last %} &raquo; {% endif %}
{% endfor %}

#5 - Options

django-breadcrumbs have a single option to set in your settings.py:

BREADCRUMBS_AUTO_HOME: defaults to False, If True, breadcrumbs add as first Breadcrumb in list (_("Home"),u"/")
BREADCRUMBS_HOME_TITLE: defaults to _(u'Home')