The notices app
The notices/ directory contains a really simple app to administratively add some system notices. This is pretty much standard Django.
This shows up under the Admin interface, and allows you to add system notices that are enabled for a specific time window.
models.py We define the very simple Notice() class here. This has a Django object manager (NoticeManager()) that allows for easy querying active notices.
apps.py defines the application (standard Django), and admin.py registers this into the main admin site.
Implementation
Notices are called when users get the main menu, i.e. right after they login, or go back to the menu.
This is implemented in the switches application, in switches/views.py, in the def switches() function. Notices are added to the messages variable, which uses the Django message frame work (see https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.1/ref/contrib/messages/)
# are there any notices to users?
notices = Notice.objects.active_notices()
if notices:
for notice in notices:
messages.add_message(request=request, level=notice.priority, message=notice.content)
In the templates/_base.html template, available messages are listed with the following code fragment. This actually allows messages to be posted on any page, if the messages variable has content in it. At present, this is only used when the main menu is called.
{% for message in messages %}
<div class="alert alert-{{ message.tags }} text-center" role="alert">
<i class="fas fa-exclamation-triangle"></i> <bold>{{ message }}</bold> <i class="fas fa-exclamation-triangle"></i>
</div>
{% endfor %}