canonicalwebteam.discourse

Flask extension to integrate discourse content generated to docs to your website. This project was previously named discourse_docs.

Writing documentation

Documentation for how to write documentation pages in Discourse for consumption by this module and how to configure the website to use the module can be found in the Canonical discourse.

Example Flask template for documentation pages can be found in examples folder. Please refer to the README in that folder for more information.

Install

Install the project with pip: pip install canonicalwebteam.discourse

You can add the extension on your project as follows, replacing, at least, base_url and index_topic_id with your own settings:

import talisker.requests
from canonicalwebteam.discourse import DiscourseAPI, Tutorials, TutorialParser

app = Flask("myapp")
session = talisker.requests.get_session()

discourse = Tutorials(
    parser=TutorialParser(
        api=DiscourseAPI(
            base_url="https://forum.example.com/", session=session
        ),
        index_topic_id=321,
        url_prefix="/docs",
    ),
    document_template="docs/document.html",
    url_prefix="/docs",
)
discourse.init_app(app)

Once this is added you will need to add the file document.html to your template folder.

Local development

For local development, it's best to test this module with one of our website projects like ubuntu.com. For more information, follow this guide (internal only).

Running tests, linting and formatting

Tests can be run with Tox:

pip3 install tox  # Install tox
tox               # Run tests
tox -e lint       # Check the format of Python code
tox -e format     # Reformat the Python code

Instructions for Engage pages extension

Because you are viewing a protected topic, you must provide api_key and api_username. You also need an index topic id, which you can get from discourse.ubuntu.com. Your index topic must contain a metadata section. Visit the EngageParser for more information about the structure. You are encouraged to use an blueprint name that does not collide with existent blueprints. The templates must match the ones provided in the parameters indicated.

Here is an example of an implementation:

engage_pages = EngagePages(
    api=DiscourseAPI(
        base_url="https://discourse.ubuntu.com/",
        session=session,
        get_topics_query_id=14,
        api_key=DISCOURSE_API_KEY, # replace with your API key
        api_username=DISCOURSE_API_USERNAME, # replace with correspoding username
    ),
    category_id=51,
    page_type="engage-pages", # one of ["engage-pages", "takeovers"]
    exclude_topics=[] # this is a list of topic ids that we want to exclude from Markdown error checks
    additional_metadata_validation=[] # list of additional keys in the metadata table that you want to validate existence for e.g. language
)

In your project, you need to create your own views:

app.add_url_rule(
    "/engage", view_func=build_engage_index(engage_pages)
)

app.add_url_rule(
    "/engage/<path>", view_func=single_engage_page(engage_pages)
)

• Where build_engage_index would be your view for the list of engage pages, which you can get by using the method EngagagePages(args).get_index()
• While single_engage_page would be your single engage pages view, which you can get using EngagePages(args).get_engage_page(path)

Similarly for takeovers, you just need to pass page_type="takeovers".

• To get a list of takeovers EngagePages(args).get_index() also.
• To get a list of active takeovers EngagePages(args).parse_active_takeovers().

Pagination

• get_index provides two additional arguments limit and offset, to provide pagination functionality. They default to 50 and 0 respectively.
• If you want to get all engage pages, which in the case of some sites like jp.ubuntu.com there are not that many, you can pass limit=-1
• Use MaxLimitError in the exceptions.py to handle excessive limit. By default, it will raise an error when it surpasses 500