Custom Markup in Django

Question

Can anyone give me an idea or perhaps some references on how to create custom markups for django using textile or Markdown(or am I thinking wrong here)?

For example: I'd like to convert the following markups(the outer bracket mean they are grouped as one tag:
[
[Contacts]
* Contact #1
* Contact #2
* Contact #3
[Friend Requests]
* Jose
]

to have them converted to:

<div class="tabs">  
    <ul> 
        <li class="tab">Contacts</li> 
        <li>Contact #1</li>
        (etc.. etc..)
    </ul>
</div>

or is regex more recommended for my needs?

Answer 1

A quick google search resulted with this

Answer 2

Django comes with a built-in contrib app that provides filters to display data using several different markup languages, including textile and markdown.

See the relevant docs for more info.

Answer 3

The built in markup app uses a filter template tag to render textile, markdown and restructuredtext. If that is not what your looking for, another option is to use a 'markup' field. e.g.,

class TownHallUpdate(models.Model):
    content = models.TextField()
    content_html = models.TextField(editable=False)

    def save(self, **kwargs):
        self.content_html = textile.textile(sanitize_html(self.content))
    super(TownHallUpdate, self).save(**kwargs)

Example from James Tauber's (and Brian Rosner's) django patterns talk.

Answer 4

Well it seems the best way is still use a regex and create my own filter.

here are some links that helped me out:
http://showmedo.com/videos/video?name=1100010&fromSeriesID=110
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/05/06/introduction-to-advanced-regular-expressions/

hope this helps someone who had the same problem as me!