Deprecation notice

I do not recommend using this package anymore since the open source version of CKEditor 4 has unfixed security issues. More on this in my blog post. Alternatives are listed here on Django Packages. I personally am using django-prose-editor. Thanks!

Django CKEditor

Django admin CKEditor integration.

Provides a RichTextField, RichTextUploadingField, CKEditorWidget and CKEditorUploadingWidget utilizing CKEditor with image uploading and browsing support included.

This version also includes:

1. support to django-storages (works with S3)
2. updated ckeditor to version 4.18.0
3. included all ckeditor language and plugin files to make everyone happy! ( only the plugins maintained by the ckeditor develops team )

Contents

• Deprecation notice
• Django CKEditor
  • Installation
    • Required
    • Required for using widget with file upload
  • Optional - customizing CKEditor editor
    • Optional for file upload
  • Usage
    • Field
    • Widget
    • Outside of django admin
    • Management Commands
    • Using S3
    • If you want to use allowedContent
  • Plugins:
  • Restricting file upload
  • Demo / Test application
  • Running selenium test
  • Troubleshooting
  • Example ckeditor configuration

Installation

Required

1. Install or add django-ckeditor to your python path.

   pip install django-ckeditor
   

2. Add ckeditor to your INSTALLED_APPS setting.

3. Run the collectstatic management command: $ ./manage.py collectstatic. This will copy static CKEditor required media resources into the directory given by the STATIC_ROOT setting. See Django's documentation on managing static files for more info.

4. CKEditor needs to know where its assets are located because it loads them lazily only when needed. The location is determined in the ckeditor-init.js script. and defaults to static/ckeditor/ckeditor/. This does not work all the time, for example when using ManifestStaticFilesStorage, any asset packaging pipeline or whatnot. django-ckeditor is quite good at automatically detecting the correct place even then, but sometimes you have to hardcode CKEDITOR_BASEPATH somewhere. This can be hardcoded in settings, i.e.:

   CKEDITOR_BASEPATH = "/my_static/ckeditor/ckeditor/"
   

   It is possible to override the admin/change_form.html template with your own if you really need to do this, i.e.:

   {% extends "admin/change_form.html" %}
   
   {% block extrahead %}
   <script>window.CKEDITOR_BASEPATH = '/my_static/ckeditor/ckeditor/';</script>
   {{ block.super }}
   {% endblock %}
   

   Of course, you should adapt this snippet to your needs when using CKEditor outside the admin app.

Required for using widget with file upload

1. Add ckeditor_uploader to your INSTALLED_APPS setting.

2. Add a CKEDITOR_UPLOAD_PATH setting to the project's settings.py file. This setting specifies a relative path to your CKEditor media upload directory. CKEditor uses Django's storage API. By default, Django uses the file system storage backend (it will use your MEDIA_ROOT and MEDIA_URL) and if you don't use a different backend you have to have write permissions for the CKEDITOR_UPLOAD_PATH path within MEDIA_ROOT, i.e.:

   CKEDITOR_UPLOAD_PATH = "uploads/"
   

   When using default file system storage, images will be uploaded to "uploads" folder in your MEDIA_ROOT and urls will be created against MEDIA_URL (/media/uploads/image.jpg).

   If you want to be able to have control over filename generation, you have to add a custom filename generator to your settings:

   # utils.py
   
   def get_filename(filename, request):
       return filename.upper()
   

   # settings.py
   
   CKEDITOR_FILENAME_GENERATOR = 'utils.get_filename'
   

   CKEditor has been tested with django FileSystemStorage and S3BotoStorage. There are issues using S3Storage from django-storages.

3. For the default filesystem storage configuration, MEDIA_ROOT and MEDIA_URL must be set correctly for the media files to work (like those uploaded by the ckeditor widget).

4. Add CKEditor URL include to your project's urls.py file:

   path('ckeditor/', include('ckeditor_uploader.urls')),
   

5. Note that by adding those URLs you add views that can upload and browse through uploaded images. Since django-ckeditor 4.4.6, those views are decorated using @staff_member_required. If you want a different permission decorator (login_required, user_passes_test etc.) then add views defined in ckeditor.urls manually to your urls.py.

Optional - customizing CKEditor editor

1. Add a CKEDITOR_CONFIGS setting to the project's settings.py file. This specifies sets of CKEditor settings that are passed to CKEditor (see CKEditor's Setting Configurations), i.e.:

   CKEDITOR_CONFIGS = {
       'awesome_ckeditor': {
           'toolbar': 'Basic',
       },
   }
   

   The name of the settings can be referenced when instantiating a RichTextField:

   content = RichTextField(config_name='awesome_ckeditor')
   

   The name of the settings can be referenced when instantiating a CKEditorWidget:

   widget = CKEditorWidget(config_name='awesome_ckeditor')
   

   By specifying a set named default you'll be applying its settings to all RichTextField and CKEditorWidget objects for which config_name has not been explicitly defined

   CKEDITOR_CONFIGS = {
       'default': {
           'toolbar': 'full',
           'height': 300,
           'width': 300,
       },
   }
   

   It is possible to create a custom toolbar

   CKEDITOR_CONFIGS = {
       'default': {
           'toolbar': 'Custom',
           'toolbar_Custom': [
               ['Bold', 'Italic', 'Underline'],
               ['NumberedList', 'BulletedList', '-', 'Outdent', 'Indent', '-', 'JustifyLeft', 'JustifyCenter', 'JustifyRight', 'JustifyBlock'],
               ['Link', 'Unlink'],
               ['RemoveFormat', 'Source']
           ]
       }
   }
   

   If you want or need plugins which are not part of django-ckeditor's plugin set you may specify assets and plugins as follows:

       text = RichTextField(
           config_name='forum-post',
   
           # CKEDITOR.config.extraPlugins:
           extra_plugins=['someplugin'],
   
           # CKEDITOR.plugins.addExternal(...)
           external_plugin_resources=[(
               'someplugin',
               '/static/.../path-to-someplugin/',
               'plugin.js',
           )],
       )
   
   Alternatively, those settings can also be provided through
   ``CKEDITOR_CONFIGS``.
   

Optional for file upload

1. All uploaded files are slugified by default. To disable this feature, set CKEDITOR_UPLOAD_SLUGIFY_FILENAME to False.

2. Set the CKEDITOR_RESTRICT_BY_USER setting to True in the project's settings.py file (default False). This restricts access to uploaded images to the uploading user (e.g. each user only sees and uploads their own images). Upload paths are prefixed by the string returned by get_username. If CKEDITOR_RESTRICT_BY_USER is set to a string, the named property is used instead. Superusers can still see all images. NOTE: This restriction is only enforced within the CKEditor media browser.

3. Set the CKEDITOR_BROWSE_SHOW_DIRS setting to True to show directories on the "Browse Server" page. This enables image grouping by directory they are stored in, sorted by date.

4. Set the CKEDITOR_RESTRICT_BY_DATE setting to True to bucked uploaded files by year/month/day.

5. You can set a custom file storage for CKEditor uploader by defining it under CKEDITOR_STORAGE_BACKEND variable in settings.

6. You can set CKEDITOR_IMAGE_BACKEND to one of the supported backends to enable thumbnails in ckeditor gallery. By default, no thumbnails are created and full-size images are used as preview. Supported backends:

   • ckeditor_uploader.backends.PillowBackend: Uses Pillow

7. With the PillowBackend backend, you can change the thumbnail size with the CKEDITOR_THUMBNAIL_SIZE setting (formerly THUMBNAIL_SIZE). Default value: (75, 75)

8. With the PillowBackend backend, you can convert and compress the uploaded images to jpeg, to save disk space. Set the CKEDITOR_FORCE_JPEG_COMPRESSION setting to True (default False) You can change the CKEDITOR_IMAGE_QUALITY setting (formerly IMAGE_QUALITY), which is passed to Pillow:

   The image quality, on a scale from 1 (worst) to 95 (best). The default is 75. Values above 95 should be avoided; 100 disables portions of the JPEG compression algorithm and results in large files with hardly any gain in image quality.

   This feature is disabled for animated images.

Usage

Field

The quickest way to add rich text editing capabilities to your models is to use the included RichTextField model field type. A CKEditor widget is rendered as the form field but in all other regards the field behaves like the standard Django TextField. For example:

from django.db import models
from ckeditor.fields import RichTextField

class Post(models.Model):
    content = RichTextField()

For file upload support use RichTextUploadingField from ckeditor_uploader.fields.

Widget

Alternatively, you can use the included CKEditorWidget as the widget for a formfield. For example:

from django import forms
from django.contrib import admin
from ckeditor.widgets import CKEditorWidget

from post.models import Post

class PostAdminForm(forms.ModelForm):
    content = forms.CharField(widget=CKEditorWidget())
    class Meta:
        model = Post
        fields = '__all__'

class PostAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    form = PostAdminForm

admin.site.register(Post, PostAdmin)

For file upload support use CKEditorUploadingWidget from ckeditor_uploader.widgets.

Overriding widget template

In Django >=1.11 for overriding ckeditor/widget.html you have three ways:

1. Place ckeditor/widget.html in BASE_DIR/templates

   • Change FORM_RENDERER to TemplateSettings.

   FORM_RENDERER = 'django.forms.renderers.TemplatesSetting'
   

   • Include templates folder in DIRS

   TEMPLATES = [{
       ...
       'DIRS': [os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'templates'), ],
       ...
   }]
   

   • Add 'django.forms' to INSTALLED_APPS.

2. Place ckeditor/widget.html in your_app/templates and place 'your_app' before 'ckeditor' and 'ckeditor_uploader' in INSTALLED_APPS.

3. Inherit from CKEditorWidget and override template_name with a custom template available in TEMPLATES DIRS as defined settings.py.

   class MyCustomCKEditorWidget(CKEditorWidget):
      template_name = "templates/custom_ckeditor/widget.html"
   

Outside of django admin

When you are rendering a form outside the admin panel, you'll have to make sure all form media is present for the editor to work. One way to achieve this is like this:

<form>
    {{ myform.media }}
    {{ myform.as_p }}
    <input type="submit"/>
</form>

or you can load the media manually as it is done in the demo app:

{% load static %}
<script type="text/javascript" src="{% static "ckeditor/ckeditor-init.js" %}"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="{% static "ckeditor/ckeditor/ckeditor.js" %}"></script>

When you need to render RichTextField's HTML output in your templates safely, just use {{ content|safe }}, Django's safe filter

Management Commands

Included is a management command to create thumbnails for images already contained in CKEDITOR_UPLOAD_PATH. This is useful to create thumbnails when using django-ckeditor with existing images. Issue the command as follows:

$ ./manage.py generateckeditorthumbnails

NOTE: If you're using custom views remember to include ckeditor.js in your form's media either through {{ form.media }} or through a <script> tag. Admin will do this for you automatically. See Django's Form Media docs for more info.

Using S3

See https://django-storages.readthedocs.org/en/latest/

NOTE: django-ckeditor will not work with S3 through django-storages without this line in settings.py:

AWS_QUERYSTRING_AUTH = False

If you want to use allowedContent

To get allowedContent to work, disable stylesheetparser plugin. So include this in your settings.py.:

CKEDITOR_CONFIGS = {
    "default": {
        "removePlugins": "stylesheetparser",
    }
}

Plugins:

django-ckeditor includes the following ckeditor plugins, but not all are enabled by default:

a11yhelp, about, adobeair, ajax, autoembed, autogrow, autolink, bbcode, clipboard, codesnippet,
codesnippetgeshi, colordialog, devtools, dialog, div, divarea, docprops, embed, embedbase,
embedsemantic, filetools, find, flash, forms, iframe, iframedialog, image, image2, language,
lineutils, link, liststyle, magicline, mathjax, menubutton, notification, notificationaggregator,
pagebreak, pastefromword, placeholder, preview, scayt, sharedspace, showblocks, smiley,
sourcedialog, specialchar, stylesheetparser, table, tableresize, tabletools, templates, uicolor,
uploadimage, uploadwidget, widget, wsc, xml

The image/file upload feature is done by the uploadimage plugin.

Restricting file upload

1. To restrict upload functionality to image files only, add CKEDITOR_ALLOW_NONIMAGE_FILES = False in your settings.py file. Currently non-image files are allowed by default.
2. By default the upload and browse URLs use staff_member_required decorator - ckeditor_uploader/urls.py - if you want other decorators just insert two urls found in that urls.py and don't include it.

Demo / Test application

If you clone the repository you will be able to run the ckeditor_demo application.

1. pip install -r ckeditor_demo_requirements.txt
2. Run python manage.py migrate
3. Create a superuser if you want to test the widget in the admin panel
4. Start the development server.

There is a forms.Form on the main page (/) and a model in admin that uses the widget for a model field. Database is set to sqlite3 and STATIC/MEDIA_ROOT to folders in temporary directory.

Running selenium test

The recommended way to run selenium tests is using tox. Select the appropriate selenium driver using the SELENIUM environment variable and optionally specify that you want to run only one environment since selenium takes some time and/or since you do not have all supported versions of Python installed locally. The example uses the combination of Python 3.9 and Django 4.0 which is a supported combination at the time of writing:

# Either
SELENIUM=firefox tox -e py39-dj40

# Or
SELENIUM=chromium tox -e py39-dj40

# Or even
SELENIUM=firefox tox

Troubleshooting

If your browser has problems displaying uploaded images in the image upload window you may need to change Django settings:

X_FRAME_OPTIONS = 'SAMEORIGIN'

More on https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.11/ref/clickjacking/#setting-x-frame-options-for-all-responses

Example ckeditor configuration

CKEDITOR_CONFIGS = {
    'default': {
        'skin': 'moono',
        # 'skin': 'office2013',
        'toolbar_Basic': [
            ['Source', '-', 'Bold', 'Italic']
        ],
        'toolbar_YourCustomToolbarConfig': [
            {'name': 'document', 'items': ['Source', '-', 'Save', 'NewPage', 'Preview', 'Print', '-', 'Templates']},
            {'name': 'clipboard', 'items': ['Cut', 'Copy', 'Paste', 'PasteText', 'PasteFromWord', '-', 'Undo', 'Redo']},
            {'name': 'editing', 'items': ['Find', 'Replace', '-', 'SelectAll']},
            {'name': 'forms',
             'items': ['Form', 'Checkbox', 'Radio', 'TextField', 'Textarea', 'Select', 'Button', 'ImageButton',
                       'HiddenField']},
            '/',
            {'name': 'basicstyles',
             'items': ['Bold', 'Italic', 'Underline', 'Strike', 'Subscript', 'Superscript', '-', 'RemoveFormat']},
            {'name': 'paragraph',
             'items': ['NumberedList', 'BulletedList', '-', 'Outdent', 'Indent', '-', 'Blockquote', 'CreateDiv', '-',
                       'JustifyLeft', 'JustifyCenter', 'JustifyRight', 'JustifyBlock', '-', 'BidiLtr', 'BidiRtl',
                       'Language']},
            {'name': 'links', 'items': ['Link', 'Unlink', 'Anchor']},
            {'name': 'insert',
             'items': ['Image', 'Flash', 'Table', 'HorizontalRule', 'Smiley', 'SpecialChar', 'PageBreak', 'Iframe']},
            '/',
            {'name': 'styles', 'items': ['Styles', 'Format', 'Font', 'FontSize']},
            {'name': 'colors', 'items': ['TextColor', 'BGColor']},
            {'name': 'tools', 'items': ['Maximize', 'ShowBlocks']},
            {'name': 'about', 'items': ['About']},
            '/',  # put this to force next toolbar on new line
            {'name': 'yourcustomtools', 'items': [
                # put the name of your editor.ui.addButton here
                'Preview',
                'Maximize',

            ]},
        ],
        'toolbar': 'YourCustomToolbarConfig',  # put selected toolbar config here
        # 'toolbarGroups': [{ 'name': 'document', 'groups': [ 'mode', 'document', 'doctools' ] }],
        # 'height': 291,
        # 'width': '100%',
        # 'filebrowserWindowHeight': 725,
        # 'filebrowserWindowWidth': 940,
        # 'toolbarCanCollapse': True,
        # 'mathJaxLib': '//cdn.mathjax.org/mathjax/2.2-latest/MathJax.js?config=TeX-AMS_HTML',
        'tabSpaces': 4,
        'extraPlugins': ','.join([
            'uploadimage', # the upload image feature
            # your extra plugins here
            'div',
            'autolink',
            'autoembed',
            'embedsemantic',
            'autogrow',
            # 'devtools',
            'widget',
            'lineutils',
            'clipboard',
            'dialog',
            'dialogui',
            'elementspath'
        ]),
    }
}