Runtime editable templates feature discussion

[ghost]

I was wondering if the templates themselves can be editted in the web GUI as part of an admin section.

My usecase is to allow Designers to create and control the templates. They use the existing datamodels available. I think it might be possible to lookup the data binding so the user can see possible data fields based on the templates context also. On the right they can see the final result as they edit the template. In short it's very similar to a markdown editor.

I think that this would also make it much easier for golang developers to make templates since you have instant feedback.

The exact approach for setting up the context of the databinding I am not sure about yet. For instance maybe the user would select a table in the database and use that as a context. Not sure yet.

The other thing is that the templates are added, editted and deleted at runtime. So these would have to live stored someone. The file system seems the most sensible

What do we think about this ?

[kennygrant]

It would be quite possible, but I'd rather avoid it, having seen things like that done in Drupal etc. and the mess that can be made with them - I think it's best to avoid blurring the line too much between code (developers) and content (users).

Approaches that other systems take:

• Drupal (used to, think they stopped this) - store the templates in the db - this has lots of problems, versioning, breakage, security etc etc
• Wordpress - shortcodes used to embed functionality in normal plaintext - again possible, but requires shortcodes defined etc
• Embedding html - this is effectively allowing code to execute via JS, but has security implications again - allow users to embed js and all bets are off.
• CSS editing - it would be quite possible to include CSS code on pages or save a css file out that is then included, and this is an approach I would not be averse to - this would allow complete customisation of page style, without the dangers of allowing editing templates/code.

The current approach is of course:

• Templates on disk loaded at first launch - this is the approach taken at the moment, and has the advantage of versioned template files which developers control completely. The templates are reloaded during development, so this does allow rapid development as you suggest above, if the designers are willing to edit in a code editor locally.