How to build a site with AMP support¶
This recipe document describes a method for creating an
AMP version of a Wagtail site and hosting it separately
to the rest of the site on a URL prefix. It also describes how to make Wagtail
render images with the <amp-img>
tag when a user is visiting a page on the
AMP version of the site.
Overview¶
In the next section, we will add a new URL entry that points to Wagtail’s
internal serve()
view which will have the effect of rendering the whole
site again under the /amp
prefix.
Then, we will add some utilities that will allow us to track whether the
current request is in the /amp
prefixed version of the site without needing
a request object.
After that, we will add a template context processor to allow us to check from within templates which version of the site is being rendered.
Then, finally, we will modify the behavior of the {% image %}
tag to make it
render <amp-img>
tags when rendering the AMP version of the site.
Creating the second page tree¶
We can render the whole site at a different prefix by duplicating the Wagtail
URL in the project urls.py
file and giving it a prefix. This must be before
the default URL from Wagtail, or it will try to find /amp
as a page:
# <project>/urls.py
urlpatterns += [
# Add this line just before the default ``include(wagtail_urls)`` line
path('amp/', include(wagtail_urls)),
path('', include(wagtail_urls)),
]
If you now open http://localhost:8000/amp/
in your browser, you should see
the homepage.
Making pages aware of “AMP mode”¶
All the pages will now render under the /amp
prefix, but right now there
isn’t any difference between the AMP version and the normal version.
To make changes, we need to add a way to detect which URL was used to render
the page. To do this, we will have to wrap Wagtail’s serve()
view and
set a thread-local to indicate to all downstream code that AMP mode is active.
Note
Why a thread-local?
(feel free to skip this part if you’re not interested)
Modifying the request
object would be the most common way to do this.
However, the image tag rendering is performed in a part of Wagtail that
does not have access to the request.
Thread-locals are global variables that can have a different value for each running thread. As each thread only handles one request at a time, we can use it as a way to pass around data that is specific to that request without having to pass the request object everywhere.
Django uses thread-locals internally to track the currently active language for the request.
Python implements thread-local data through the threading.local
class,
but as of Django 3.x, multiple requests can be handled in a single thread
and so thread-locals will no longer be unique to a single request. Django
therefore provides asgiref.Local
as a drop-in replacement.
Now let’s create that thread-local and some utility functions to interact with it,
save this module as amp_utils.py
in an app in your project:
# <app>/amp_utils.py
from contextlib import contextmanager
from asgiref.local import Local
_amp_mode_active = Local()
@contextmanager
def activate_amp_mode():
"""
A context manager used to activate AMP mode
"""
_amp_mode_active.value = True
try:
yield
finally:
del _amp_mode_active.value
def amp_mode_active():
"""
Returns True if AMP mode is currently active
"""
return hasattr(_amp_mode_active, 'value')
This module defines two functions:
activate_amp_mode
is a context manager which can be invoked using Python’swith
syntax. In the body of thewith
statement, AMP mode would be active.amp_mode_active
is a function that returnsTrue
when AMP mode is active.
Next, we need to define a view that wraps Wagtail’s builtin serve
view and
invokes the activate_amp_mode
context manager:
# <app>/amp_views.py
from django.template.response import SimpleTemplateResponse
from wagtail.views import serve as wagtail_serve
from .amp_utils import activate_amp_mode
def serve(request, path):
with activate_amp_mode():
response = wagtail_serve(request, path)
# Render template responses now while AMP mode is still active
if isinstance(response, SimpleTemplateResponse):
response.render()
return response
Then we need to create an amp_urls.py
file in the same app:
# <app>/amp_urls.py
from django.urls import re_path
from wagtail.urls import serve_pattern
from . import amp_views
urlpatterns = [
re_path(serve_pattern, amp_views.serve, name='wagtail_amp_serve')
]
Finally, we need to update the project’s main urls.py
to use this new URLs
file for the /amp
prefix:
# <project>/urls.py
from myapp import amp_urls as wagtail_amp_urls
urlpatterns += [
# Change this line to point at your amp_urls instead of Wagtail's urls
path('amp/', include(wagtail_amp_urls)),
re_path(r'', include(wagtail_urls)),
]
After this, there shouldn’t be any noticeable difference to the AMP version of the site.
Write a template context processor so that AMP state can be checked in templates¶
This is optional, but worth doing so we can confirm that everything is working so far.
Add an amp_context_processors.py
file into your app that contains the
following:
# <app>/amp_context_processors.py
from .amp_utils import amp_mode_active
def amp(request):
return {
'amp_mode_active': amp_mode_active(),
}
Now add the path to this context processor to the
['OPTIONS']['context_processors']
key of the TEMPLATES
setting:
# Either <project>/settings.py or <project>/settings/base.py
TEMPLATES = [
{
...
'OPTIONS': {
'context_processors': [
...
# Add this after other context processors
'myapp.amp_context_processors.amp',
],
},
},
]
You should now be able to use the amp_mode_active
variable in templates.
For example:
{% if amp_mode_active %}
AMP MODE IS ACTIVE!
{% endif %}
Using a different page template when AMP mode is active¶
You’re probably not going to want to use the same templates on the AMP site as you do on the normal web site. Let’s add some logic in to make Wagtail use a separate template whenever a page is served with AMP enabled.
We can use a mixin, which allows us to re-use the logic on different page types. Add the following to the bottom of the amp_utils.py file that you created earlier:
# <app>/amp_utils.py
import os.path
...
class PageAMPTemplateMixin:
@property
def amp_template(self):
# Get the default template name and insert `_amp` before the extension
name, ext = os.path.splitext(self.template)
return name + '_amp' + ext
def get_template(self, request):
if amp_mode_active():
return self.amp_template
return super().get_template(request)
Now add this mixin to any page model, for example:
# <app>/models.py
from .amp_utils import PageAMPTemplateMixin
class MyPageModel(PageAMPTemplateMixin, Page):
...
When AMP mode is active, the template at app_label/mypagemodel_amp.html
will be used instead of the default one.
If you have a different naming convention, you can override the
amp_template
attribute on the model. For example:
# <app>/models.py
from .amp_utils import PageAMPTemplateMixin
class MyPageModel(PageAMPTemplateMixin, Page):
amp_template = 'my_custom_amp_template.html'