App: Blog¶

Phase 3. Writing, publishing, and managing blog posts with a lightweight editor.

Responsibility¶

Activated in Phase 3
Post model managed through Django admin and a custom editor view
WebSocket-powered live Markdown preview (this is where ASGI visibly pays off)

Models¶

# apps/blog/models.py

class Post(models.Model):
    class Status(models.TextChoices):
        DRAFT = 'draft', 'Draft'
        PUBLISHED = 'published', 'Published'

    title = models.CharField(max_length=300)
    slug = models.SlugField(unique=True)
    body = models.TextField()               # Markdown source
    status = models.CharField(
        max_length=10,
        choices=Status,
        default=Status.DRAFT
    )
    published_at = models.DateTimeField(null=True, blank=True)
    created_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
    updated_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True)

    class Meta:
        ordering = ['-published_at']

    def __str__(self):
        return self.title

URL Patterns¶

URL	View	Name
`/blog/`	`PostListView`	`blog:list`
`/blog/<slug>/`	`PostDetailView`	`blog:detail`
`/blog/editor/`	`EditorView`	`blog:editor` (staff only)

Writing Interface¶

The editor view uses EasyMDE — a browser-based Markdown editor loaded via CDN. No build step, no npm. The editor sends Markdown source to a WebSocket endpoint; the server renders it to HTML and pushes it back to the preview pane in real time.

<!-- Load EasyMDE via CDN — no build step -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/easymde/dist/easymde.min.css">
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/easymde/dist/easymde.min.js"></script>

ASGI Payoff: WebSocket Live Preview¶

This is the concrete moment where running ASGI from day 1 pays off.

A WebSocket keeps a persistent, bidirectional connection open between the editor and the server. Every keystroke sends the Markdown source; the server renders it to HTML and pushes it back to the preview pane. Under WSGI, this is impossible — HTTP is request/response only, with no persistent connection.

# Requires Django Channels or a custom ASGI consumer
# Planned for Phase 3 implementation

Publishing Flow¶

Create a Post in Django admin or the custom editor view (status: DRAFT)
Write in Markdown with live preview
Set status = PUBLISHED and published_at = now()
Post appears on /blog/ immediately