My last post was about django-tagging.
After two days using it under: http://politlog.sveri.de our tags have become very fast confusing.
Adding a new entry and looking for tags in the entry and comparing them to tags already given away is a time consuming task. Nothing for me. So i started thinking and looking for automation. I found no solution for django, the webframework django-tagging is used for. I did not find another cool solution anyway.

My next thought was, hm, writing a parser is a task done in seconds, but writing a tag-list to parse could endure a whole life. Nothing for me too.
But then it came instantly to my mind, there is a very cool, fast and efficient semiautmatic solution.
Here is the general approach.

1. Install a tagging system.
2. Start using it and give away tags.
3. Write a parser which parses your entry, comment, post whatsoever and compares them to the already given away tags.
4. Take out the found tags and insert them into your tag field.
5. Add the new tags.

Thats it. Fast, easy and after a short time you have inserted almost all tags that you’ll use most of the time. No more comparing, much less time consumption.

And here is a specific implementation into the django admin interface.
I have a model called Entries. There is a column explanation. Django-tagging is installed and stores its Tags in model called: tagging.models.Tags.
For javascript/ajax things i use jquery-1.3.2.

To enhance the admin interface you have to take some steps.

1. In your templates directory create a folder admin.
2. Then create the folder structure for the model you want to enhance, in my case it was:
   mkdir entry
   mkdir entry/entries
   cp the change_form.html from django/contrib/admin/templates/admin/ to the created folder.
3. Open it up and insert a javascript into the block extrahead:
   $(document).ready(function() {
   $(‘#id_explanation’).change(function() {
   data = {text:$(this).val()};
   var args = {type:”POST”, url:”{% url ao_get_tags_from_text %}”, data:data, complete:done_tags};
   $.ajax(args);
   return false;
   });
   var done_tags = function(res, status){
   if(status == “success”){
   $(‘#id_tags’).val(res.responseText);
   }
   };
   });
   This script basically does the following. It checks the input field for explanation for a change and if so it calls via ajax the view ao_get_tags_from_text.
   Afterwards it takes the data from the view and inserts it into the input field for the tags: id_tags.
4. And here comes the view:
   def get_tags_from_text(request):
   ”’returns all matched tags that were found
   in the given text as string, comma separated”’
   if request.method == “POST”:
   text = request.POST['text']
   else:
   return HttpResponseServerError(“invalid data in get politician from party view”)
   tags = Tag.objects.all()
   tags_in_text = ”
   text = text.lower()
   for tag in tags:
   if tag.name.lower() in text:
   tags_in_text = tags_in_text + tag.name + ‘, ‘
   return render_to_response(‘admin/entry/entries/tags_return.html’,
   {“tags”: tags_in_text,},RequestContext(request))

Thats it. Easy? Isnt it?
Of course, there is always a lot of room for improvement. But thats on your side.

Have fun with it.