Misago/docs/ProfileFields.md

Profile fields

Misago allows your users to fill in additional details about themselves for other users to see on their profiles, such as their real name, gender, short bio or contact options such as homepage address or Twitter/Skype handles.

In addition to those, Misago also uses "read only" profile fields to displays users IP addresses on their profiles for forum moderators.

Writing custom profile field

Under the hood, profile fields are Python classes inheriting from either the misago.users.profilefields.ProfileField class or one of higher-level base fields.

To write your own profile field, you'll need to create custom class that specifies following properties and methods:

fieldname

The fieldname attribute specifies field's unique identifier in Misago. This identifier is used as key on user.profile_fields model field to store field's value as well as source form inputs name and id attributes.

Example "Website" field that specifies website as it's fieldname:

class WebsiteField(basefields.UrlProfileField):
    fieldname = 'website'
    label = _("Website")

label and get_label

Your field will have to define either label attribute, or get_label(user) method if you wish to customize the label content's depending on user's field contents.

Below field will always display "Skype ID" as its label:

class SkypeIdField(basefields.TextProfileField):
    fieldname = 'skype'
    label = _("Skype ID")

And example field that will look up user's gender before displaying label:

class DynamicLabelField(basefields.TextProfileField):
    fieldname = 'dynamiclabelexample'
    
    def get_label(self, user):
        if user.profile_fields.get('gender') == 'female'
            return _("Your femine interest")
        if user.profile_fields.get('gender') == 'male':
            return _("Your masculine interest")
        return _("Your interest")

help_text and get_help_text

If you wish to, your field may profile help text for display in forms that will provide additional help to users filling in their details.

Unlike label, the help text is displayed only in forms.

Below fields have no help text:

class LocationField(basefields.TextProfileField):
    fieldname = 'location'
    label = _("Location")


class RealNameField(basefields.TextProfileField):
    fieldname = 'real_name'
    label = _("Real name")
    help_text = None

This field specifies help text via help_text property:

class WebsiteField(basefields.UrlProfileField):
    fieldname = 'website'
    label = _("Website")
    help_text = _(
        "If you own page in the internet you wish to share on your profile "
        "you may enter its address here. Remember to for it to be valid http "
        "address starting with either http:// or https://"
    )

And this field builds help text using user's slug:

class TwitterHandleField(basefields.TextProfileField):
    fieldname = 'twitter'
    label = _("Twitter handle")

    def get_help_text(self, user):
        return _(
            'If you own Twitter account, here you may enter your Twitter handle for other users '
            'to find you. Starting your handle with "@" sign is optional. Either "@%(slug)s" or '
            '"%(slug)s" are valid values.'
        ) % {
            'slug': user.slug
        }

readonly

Defining readonly = True on field will make it never editable. This is useful when you are defining profile fields that display different information about user but are never editable on their own.

Example field that displays to moderators an IP address that user used to register account:

class JoinIpField(basefields.TextProfileField):
    fieldname = 'join_ip'
    label = _("Join IP")
    readonly = True

    def get_value_display_data(self, request, user, value):
        if not request.user.acl_cache.get('can_see_users_ips'):
            return None

        return {
            'text': user.joined_from_ip
        }

is_editable

The is_editable method allows you make field conditionally read-only.

Below profile field will be only editable by profile field's moderators:

class ModeratorDescriptionField(basefields.UrlifiedTextareaProfileField):
    fieldname = 'moderatordescription'
    label = _("Moderator description")

    def is_editable(self, request, user):
        return request.user.acl_cache.get('can_moderate_profile_details')

get_form_field

The get_form_field method is called to obtain form field that is then added to user edit form, plugging the field to Django's form handling mechanics.

This method is used in two places:

1. to add field to edit user form in admin control panel.
2. to add field to edit user details form used behind the courtain by Misago to clean and validate user details sent to API from "edit details" form in user options and on user profile pages.

This field uses get_form_field to specify URLField as field that should be used to edit its value:

class WebsiteField(basefields.UrlProfileField):
    fieldname = 'website'
    label = _("Website")

    def get_form_field(self, request, user):
        return forms.URLField(
            label=self.get_label(user),
            help_text=self.get_help_text(user),
            initial=user.profile_fields.get(self.fieldname),
            max_length=250,
            disabled=self.readonly,
            required=False,
        )

Notice that the fact that this field is hidden from users outside of admin control panel means that you may use it to specify admin-oriented label and help_text within it, and use label and help_text props documented ealier for user-facing UI.

Also take a note that while its not necessary, its good practice for all profile fields to be optional, and thus specify required=False on field returned by get_form_field.

get_form_field_json

This method is called to obtain the JSON describing how to build edit field in JavaScript UI. Because default implementation provided by the ProfileField is versalite enough for great majority of use cases, its unlikely that you'll ever want to write custom implementation for your fields, instead limiting yourself to editing the get_input_json exclusively.

class RealNameField(basefields.TextProfileField):
    fieldname = 'real_name'
    label = _("Real name")

    def get_form_field_json(self, request, user):
        # default implementation inherited from ProfileField
        return {
            'fieldname': self.fieldname,
            'label': self.get_label(user),
            'help_text': self.get_help_text(user),
            'initial': user.profile_fields.get(self.fieldname, ''),
            'input': self.get_input_json(request, user),
        }

Very much alike the get_form_field documented ealier, because this method is origin of truth for details edit forms in user-facing UI, you may modify it to customize field's label and help text.

get_input_json

This method is called to obtain the JSON describing field input to create in end-user facing forms.

It supports either of those inputs:

# this field will use text input
class RealNameField(basefields.TextProfileField):
    fieldname = 'real_name'
    label = _("Real name")

    def get_input_json(self, request, user):
        return {
            'type': 'text',
        }


# this field will use textarea
class BioField(basefields.UrlifiedTextareaProfileField):
    fieldname = 'bio'
    label = _("Bio")

    def get_input_json(self, request, user):
        return {
            'type': 'textarea',
        }


# this field will use select input
class GenderField(basefields.ChoiceProfileField):

    # ...

    def get_input_json(self, request, user):
        choices = []
        for key, choice in self.get_choices():
            choices.append({
                'value': key,
                'label': choice,
            })

        return {
            'type': 'select',
            'choices': [
                {
                    'value': '',
                    'label': _("Not specified"),
                },
                {
                    'value': 'female',
                    'label': _("Female"),
                },
                {
                    'value': 'male',
                    'label': _("Male"),
                },
            ],
        }

Misago comes with convenience base classes for popular input types like text, textarea or select, that are documented further into this document.

clean

In addition to cleaning and validation logic implemented by the form field returned in get_form_field, you may include custom cleaning and validation logic on your field that gets run as part of form's clean and validate process.

Below example shows field that performs additional validation and cleanup on user-entered twitter handle:

class TwitterHandleField(basefields.TextProfileField):
    fieldname = 'twitter'
    label = _("Twitter handle")

    def clean(self, request, user, data):
        data = data.lstrip('@')
        if data and not re.search('^[A-Za-z0-9_]+$', data):
            raise ValidationError(ugettext("This is not a valid twitter handle."))
        return data

Field's clean method is called only when user filled it in edit form. It should return cleaned value, or raise ValidationError on any errors. Those errors will be associated with and displayed by their fields in form.

get_display_data

Just like the get_input_json returns JSON describing how form field should be displayed in user-facing edit interface, the get_display_data should return JSON describing how its value should be displayed on user's "details" tab in profile. This field is also well covered by the default implementation provided by the ProfileField class, which does following:

1. If user's profile doesn't have value for field that we are trying to display, and field is not always readonly, return None, telling interface to don't display it.
2. Call the get_value_display_data method to obtain JSON describing how field's value should be displayed on the page. If this method returns None, don't display field on user's profile.

3. Add field's name and label to returned JSON.

   class ProfileField(object):
       
   # ...
   
   def get_display_data(self, request, user):
       value = user.profile_fields.get(self.fieldname, '')
       if not self.readonly and not len(value):
           return None
   
       data = self.get_value_display_data(request, user, value)
       if not data:
           return None
   
       data.update({
           'fieldname': self.fieldname,
           'name': text_type(self.get_label(user)),
       })
   
       return data
   

Because of such generic implementation, you'll likely limit yourself to customizing the get_value_display_data when writing your fields, and only ever use this method if you want to customize displayed label.

get_value_display_data

This method returns JSON describing how field's value should be displayed on user's profile page. Misago supports quite a few display methods for profile fields:

# Display value in paragraph
class RealNameField(basefields.TextProfileField):
    
    # ...

    def get_value_display_data(self, request, user, value):
        return {
            'type': 'text',
        }


# Display value as html
class BioField(basefields.TextareaProfileField):
    
    # ...
    
    def get_value_display_data(self, request, user, value):
        return {
            'html': html.linebreaks(html.escape(value)),
        }


# Display value as link
class WebsiteField(basefields.UrlProfileField):
    
    # ...
    
    def get_value_display_data(self, request, user, value):
        return {
            'url': value,
        }


# Display value as link with text label
class TwitterHandleField(basefields.UrlProfileField):
    
    # ...
    
    def get_value_display_data(self, request, user, value):
        return {
            'text': '@{}'.format(data),
            'url': 'https://twitter.com/{}'.format(data),
        }

In default implementation provided by the ProfileField, this field is called by the get_display_data. As such its prefferable in most cases for field to provide custom get_value_display_data instead of get_display_data.

As documented in the get_display_data, returning None from this methid will prevent this field from beind displayed on user's profile.

search_users

This method is called by search function available on users lists in admin control panel, to search users that have profile field with specified value. Its called with single argument, criteria, that contains search string entered in search form, and should return None or Q object that lets Misago search field's value.

The ProfileField class implements generic search_users implementation that assumes that field's value is text and performs case sensitive search on users profile_fields value as well as excludes readonly fields from search:

class ProfileField(object):

    # ...

    def search_users(self, criteria):
        if self.readonly:
            return None

        return Q(**{
            'profile_fields__{}__contains'.format(self.fieldname): criteria
        })

In addition to this ChoiceProfileField base field provides custom implementation that searches users by label and value of their choice.

Base fields

To make it easier to implement common profile fields, Misago defines few custom classes importable from the misago.users.profilefields:

ChoiceProfileField

This field lets user select single choice from list of available options. Example of such fields in Misago is GenderField that allows user to select gender information to be displayed on his or her profile.

choices and get_choices

Fields inheriting from the ChoiceProfileField require you to specify either choices attribute, or get_choices method if you wish for choices to be dependant on individual user.

If no user is provided to get_choices, all possible choices should be returned - however this only affects the behaviour of searching users in admin control panel.

Example of field that lets user select gender information:

class GenderField(basefields.ChoiceProfileField):
    fieldname = 'gender'
    label = _("Gender")

    choices = (
        ('', _('Not specified')),
        ('secret', _('Not telling')),
        ('female', _('Female')),
        ('male', _('Male')),
    )

Field that associates available choices with user's posts count:

class FleetRankField(basefields.ChoiceProfileField):
    fieldname = 'fleet_rank'
    label = _("Fleet rank")

    def get_choices(self, user=None):
        choices = [
            ('', _('Not specified')),
            ('ensign', _('Ensign')),
        ]

        if not user or user.posts > 5:
            choices.append(['leutenant', _('Leutenant')])
        if not user or user.posts > 15:
            choices.append(['wing_commander', _('Wing commander')])
        if not user or user.posts > 30:
            choices.append(['group_captain', _('Group captain')])
        if not user or user.posts > 50:
            choices.append(['admiral', _('Admiral')])

        return choices

TextProfileField

Default text input that takes no more than 250 characters and displays them as paragraph of text.

TextareaProfileField

Textarea that takes no more than 500 characters and displays them as list paragraphs.

UrlifiedTextareaProfileField

This field behaves same as UrlifiedTextareaProfileField, but if user enters urls in the field, those will be turned into clickable anchor links.

UrlProfileField

Text input that takes no more than 250 characters, validates if input is valid URL and displays it as anchor link with rel="nofollow" attribute on user's profile.

Default fields

Misago defines few default profile fields that can be imported from the misago.users.profilefields.default:

BioField

Field inheriting from UrlifiedTextareaProfileField that allows user to enter small text bit about themselves.

RealNameField

Field inheriting from TextProfileField that allows user to enter real name.

LocationField

Field inheriting from TextProfileField that allows user to enter their location or origin.

GenderField

Field inheriting from ChoiceProfileField that allows user to disclose his/her gender to other members, or make their wish to keep it secret explictly known via "Not telling" option.

WebsiteField

Field inheriting from UrlProfileField that allows user to enter their website's address.

SkypeIdField

Field inheriting from TextProfileField that allows user to enter their Skype ID.

TwitterHandleField

Field inheriting from TextProfileField that allows user to enter their Twitter handle. This field validates valid handles, strips optional leading "@" and displays handle as rel="nofollow" url to user's Twitter profile.

Obtaining list of profile fields keys existing in database

Misago comes with special listusedprofilefields command that lists fields existing in database, by their fieldname:

$ python manage.py listusedprofilefields
bio:        5
real_name:  5
location:   2

Above result means that 5 users profile_fields has bio and real_name keys and two users have location key. This tool doesn't filter off empty values, meaning that those key exist, but may be empty strings.

Deleting profile field from database

If you want to delete key from users profile_fields, you may do it with deleteprofilefield commant. For example, to delete all information set in website field, you may do this:

$ python manage.py deleteprofilefield website
"website" profile field has been deleted from 132 users.

Likewise, this field deletes keys and does no checking if those are user entered values or empty strings.

Using logging for controling profile fields usage

Whenever user's profile_fields value is edited either in admin control panel or via "edit details" form, such event, new values and old values are logged by misago.users.ProfileFields logger.