We have an informal in-house style that says alternating rows of table data should have different background colors, so that it is easy to keep track of which row is which. This is done by alternating the "class" attribute of each "<tr>" tag. In trying to use Albatross, I wound up doing lots of code like
<al-if expr="i.index() % 2"> <tr> <al-else> <tr class="alt"> </al-if>
Not only is this ugly to look at and a lot to type, it really messes with the head of the HTML editor (I use xemacs) and breaks the indentation.
So we wrote an extension tag <alx-tr> to hide all this nastyness. I include it here in case anyone else finds it interesting. (This version is for Albatross 1.10; you can find a version for Albatross 1.01 by looking at old versions of this page)
1 '''
2 A collection of useful custom tag classes for use with the albatross library.
3
4 To make these available, simply pass the class object to the
5 register_tagclasses() member of the application object.
6
7 E.g.:
8
9 import itgatags
10
11 ....
12 class MyApp(SimpleApp):
13 def __init__(self):
14 SimpleApp.__init__(self,......)
15 for page_class in (.......):
16 self .register_page(page_class.name, page_class())
17 for tag_class in (itgatags.TR,):
18 self .register_tagclasses(tag_class)
19
20
21
22 '''
23
24 from albatross.tags import EvalAttribMixin
25 from albatross import EnclosingTag
26
27 class TR(EnclosingTag, EvalAttribMixin):
28 '''
29 <alx-tr expr="..." classes="alt1,alt2,alt3"> ... </alx-tr>
30
31 Similar to <tr>, except that it evaluates expr (which must be an
32 integer) and then chooses a "class=" attribute for the <tr> tag
33 from those listed in the "classes" arg by taking "<expr> % <# of
34 classes>". <expr> is often "i.index()" where i is an iterator
35 created by <al-for>.
36
37 This is useful for having rows of the table with alternating or
38 successive styles. Elements of the "classes" list may be empty
39 (i.e. "alt1,") or the empty string ("alt1,'',alt2") which will
40 produce a <tr> without a "class=" attribute.
41
42 "classes" may be omitted and defaults to ",alt" (i.e. alternating
43 normal and "class=alt" styles. Naturally, you will need some sort
44 of stylesheet definitions for these classes.
45
46 Example:
47 <table>
48 <al-for iter="i" expr="...">
49 <alx-tr expr="i.index()" classes=",alt1,,alt2">
50 <td><al-value expr="i.value().name">.......</td>
51 </alx-tr>
52 </al-for>
53 </table>
54 This will produce a table where the odd rows are normal, but the
55 2nd and 4th rows have special class (and hence presumably special
56 formatting).
57
58 <alx-tr counter="name" classes="'',alt1,alt2"> ... </alx-tr>
59
60 Similar to the above, but instead of evaluating an expression,
61 this uses a counter with the given name in the ctx.locals space
62 (creating it with the value 0 if necessary). The counter will be
63 incremented after it is used. This is useful if a single table
64 contains rows from multiple <al-for> tags, or summary lines at the
65 bottom, or similar. It can also count the number of rows for you!
66
67 Example:
68 <table>
69 <al-for iter="i" expr="...">
70 <alx-tr counter="row">
71 <td><al-value expr="i.value().name">.......</td>
72 </alx-tr>
73 </al-for>
74 <alx-tr counter="row">
75 <td>TOTAL:........</dt>
76 <alx-tr>
77 </table>
78 <al-value expr="row"> Rows Added.
79
80 Using a counter rather than the iterator.index() method ensures
81 that the TOTAL row has the appropriate and consistant class
82 attribute.
83
84 '''
85 name = 'alx-tr'
86
87 def __init__(self, ctx, filename, line_num, attribs):
88 EnclosingTag.__init__(self, ctx, filename, line_num, attribs)
89 if self.has_attrib('expr'):
90 self.counter = ''
91 elif self.has_attrib('counter'):
92 self.counter = self.get_attrib('counter')
93 else:
94 self.raise_error('missing "counter" or "expr" attribute')
95 if self.has_attrib('classes'):
96 cs = self.get_attrib('classes')
97 self.classes = []
98 for c in cs.split(','):
99 if c == "''" or c == '""':
100 c = ''
101 self.classes.append(c)
102 else:
103 self.classes = ['', 'alt']
104
105 def to_html(self, ctx):
106 if self.counter:
107 if ctx.has_value(self.counter):
108 val = ctx.get_value(self.counter)
109 else:
110 val = 0
111 else: # expr
112 val = int(self.eval_attrib(ctx, 'expr'))
113
114 cls = self.classes[val % len(self.classes)]
115 if cls:
116 ctx.write_content('<tr class="%s">' % cls)
117 else:
118 ctx.write_content('<tr>')
119
120 self.content.to_html(ctx)
121 ctx.write_content('</tr>\n')
122
123 if self.counter:
124 ctx.set_value(self.counter, val + 1)
Nice. Another approach, although not as simple to read as the custom tag, uses the standard <al-lookup>.
<al-lookup name="classes"> <al-item expr="0">class1</al-item> <al-item expr="1">class2</al-item> </al-lookup> <table> <al-for iter="iter" expr="a_list"> <tr class="<al-value expr="iter.count()%2" lookup="classes"/>"> <td><al-value expr="i.value()"/></td> </tr> </al-for> </table>
<al-lookup> may be better under some circumstances since it doesn't mess around with the HTML and doesn't assume that you always want to set the class (sometimes you might want to change the 'style' attribute).
-- Matt