How to integrade and develope third-party packages/extensions with starlette-admin?

[hasansezertasan]

Hello everyone 👋 I have started to develop a package called hasansezertasan/starlette-admin-fields but there is one thing that bothers me. How can I properly integrate it with starlette-admin? Emphasize the "properly".

I do recommend checking #439 before rereading further.

In that issue, we decided to go with a third-party package for additional fields, and in this #439 (comment) I asked about how to integrate a third-party package with starlette-admin but there is still not an answer. It's blurry. What is the proper way?

Flask documentation has a page about it: Flask Extension Development — Flask Documentation (3.0.x) and it makes it clear to develop an extension for the Flask ecosystem.

For now, none of the fields has any additional HTML template but some of them require some static CSS and JS files.

So how to extend statics endpoint with a statics folder from a third-party package also same question goes for templates too. Maybe we can add an interface to starlette-admin for easier integration or maybe we can add an extension development guide page in the documentation like Flask.

And also, should we move TinyMCEEditorField to that package or leave it here?

[hasansezertasan]

Here are some resources, discussions, examples, StackOverflow questions, etc that I found on the internet.

• Static Files:
  • multiple static folders encode/starlette#537
  • Multiple directories in StaticFiles encode/starlette#625
  • Add staticfiles packages with directory encode/starlette#1350
  • Static Files - Starlette
• Templates
  • Support multiple template directories for large projects encode/starlette#1214
  • Templates - Starlette
  • Templating - Starlette Core
• Flask Ecosystem
  • python - How to use a Jinja2 extension direct from a Flask render_template - Stack Overflow
  • helloflask/bootstrap-flask quite similar to what I want to build.
  • helloflask/flask-ckeditor: CKEditor integration for Flask, including image upload, code syntax highlight, and more.
  • digital-land/govuk-jinja-components: This one handled it pretty well...
  • LandRegistry/govuk-frontend-jinja: GOV.UK Frontend Jinja Macros
  • LandRegistry/govuk-frontend-wtf: GOV.UK Frontend WTForms Widgets
  • nathancahill/Flask-Edits: Editable Content in Flask
  • artemShelest/flask-admin-subview: Embedded Flask-Admin list views
  • cllen/flask-admin-tablefield: tablefield for flask-admin!

[hasansezertasan]

WDYT about this one @jowilf?

I'm hyped about the starlette-admin-fields package. I believe something like mentioned in this #439 (comment) could solve our problem.

[jowilf]

it might be easiest to provide a function, like init_admin, that takes the admin as an argument and adds any additional configuration needed for the package to work. For instance, an extra loader or a mounted static route could be added.

To add an extra loader, for example, you could use the following code:

admin.templates.env.loader.append(PackageLoader(""))

Please note that this is only a suggestion and I haven't looked into it deeply.

[hasansezertasan]

it might be easiest to provide a function, like install..., that takes the admin as an argument and adds any additional configuration needed for the package to work. For instance, an extra loader or a mounted static route could be added.

So you are recommending adding a function to starlette-admin-fields package that extends the templates loader? If yes, I thought about that but how are we going to extend StaticFiles?

Maybe something like this:

def install_fields(admin: Any) -> None:
    admin.templates.env.loader.append(PackageLoader("starlette_admin_fields", "templates"))
    # What about static files?

I also didn't try this but I know StaticFile object doesn't have something similar, it doesn't allow extending the statics folder on the go. You have to pass packages=["starlette_admin", "starlette_admin_fields"] when initializing.

[jowilf]

admin.routes.add(Mount('unique_name', app=StaticFiles(...))

[hasansezertasan]

admin.routes.add(Mount('unique_name', app=StaticFiles(...))

Well, that's an implementation. I'll give it a try and present you a demo.

Edit: One question, what should I name this unique name? statics reserved by starlette-admin. Does statics-saf (saf => Starlette-Admin-Fields) sound good?

[hasansezertasan]

You can find the full example at starlette-admin-fields repo.

@jowilf Thank you for your help.