The Bliss Bibliographic Classification is a fully faceted classification scheme that provides detailed classification for use in libraries and information services of all kinds, with a broad and detailed structure and order. Last week, I was invited to give a talk at the annual Bliss Classification Association Lecture, held in London at UCL.

DJFacet is a pluggable module for the Django web application framework that allows you to navigate the data in your web app using an approach based on 'facets'. I've already written about DJFacet in the past; now the good news is that I've released a major update to the software with complete support for hierarchical facets.

DJFacet is a pluggable module for the Django web application framework that allows you to navigate the data in your web app using an approach based on 'facets'. DJFacet relies entirely on the Django models you've already defined within your project and on a configuration file where you can create facets and assign them behavior. This makes it very easy to integrate within your Django application.

[Update 14/09/11 : If you're using Django 1.3 you can also skip point -4- below, as the 'cut' filter is included in Django by default now!] [Update 15/2/10 : I added a small example that shows how to make this work with Inlines too, see point 6 below...] [Update 18/10/09 : please note that the code has been tested on django1.1! Check the comments below if you're running 1.0...] In a previous post I was talking about using autocomplete fields in django's admin, and how this feature was missing for inlines. I sorted this out and put together an essential bunch of files you can easily include in your project to that purpose. Nothing final or too wonderful but just a hack that'll get you going...

I still haven't solved this problem entirely, and I'll tell you why. The issue has been discussed by many people, but probably the first and most influential solution is still Jannis Leidel's 'An autocomplete form widget for ForeignKey model fields'.

UPDATE 8/6/11: I uploaded an improved version of the map Faceted search (navigation, or browsing) is a technique for accessing a collection of information represented using a faceted classification, allowing users to explore by filtering available information. A faceted classification system allows the assignment of multiple classifications to an object, enabling the classifications to be ordered in multiple ways, rather than in a single, pre-determined, taxonomic order.

One of the reasons that kept me away (sigh) from TextMate is the lack of autocompletion support.. especially in Python. Seems like those days have ended - I just downloaded and installed Pysmell, and it works great!!!

I tried it out last night, and the interface seems really rich and powerful. It's NINES, a new digital scholarship tool that puts together SW and collaborative tagging in an application targeted and USABLE by anyone, I believe. Worth trying out..