How Can I Configure Django Admin to Use a Rich Text Editor That Saves Images in Base64 Format?

As a web developer working with Django, we often encounter the need to enrich the text editing capabilities in the Django admin. Popular plugins like CKEditor offer powerful features, including image upload capabilities. However, using CKEditor or similar tools often leads to images being stored as separate files, which isn’t always ideal, especially when you want everything contained within a single database field in base64 format.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how you can integrate CKEditor to save images in base64 format directly into your database without storing the images as separate files.

Step 1: Install CKEditor

First, you need to install django-ckeditor using pip. If CKEditor5 is a requirement due to its modern UI and features, be aware that integrating it specifically in base64 mode in Django takes a bit more manual work. For simplicity, this guide will focus on getting CKEditor (which defaults to CKEditor 4) set up.

pip install django-ckeditor

Step 2: Configure CKEditor in Django Settings

After installation, add ‘ckeditor’ to your INSTALLED_APPS in Django’s settings.py:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    'ckeditor',
]

Step 3: Update Your Models

In your Django models, import RichTextField from ckeditor.fields and replace the standard TextField or any other text field you have that you want to be using CKEditor.

from django.db import models
from ckeditor.fields import RichTextField

class MyModel(models.Model):
    content = RichTextField()

Step 4: Customize CKEditor to Encode Images in Base64

Django-ckeditor doesn’t natively support saving images in base64. However, we can customize CKEditor’s configuration to convert images to base64 before inserting them into the editor.

Set up your CKEditor configuration in settings.py. You need to add the following configuration:

CKEDITOR_CONFIGS = {
    'default': {
        # Other CKEditor options
        'extraPlugins': ','.join(
            [
                'uploadimage', # Required plugin for base64 image support
            ]),
        'removeDialogTabs': 'image:advanced;link:advanced',
        'width': 'auto',
    },
}

Now, customize the behavior in your Django template or form by ensuring CKEditor translates any pasted or uploaded images into base64 format. This can be achieved using JavaScript by hooking into CKEditor’s instanceReady event, but CKEditor 4 might require additional plugin support or manual adjustments not covered directly here.

For a pure CKEditor5 with base64 integration into Django directly, you would typically need to customize the CKEditor build. This process involves downloading the CKEditor 5 source, adding the Base64UploadAdapter plugin, and integrating this custom build into your Django project.

Step 5: Deploy and Test

With everything set up, make sure to collect static files if you are in a production environment:

python manage.py collectstatic

Now, run your development server and begin testing the CKEditor in Django admin. Any images you upload using the rich text editor should now be encoded in base64 and stored directly in the database column specified in your model.

Remember, storing images in base64 in your database can significantly increase the size of your database and might affect the performance when loading large datasets. Always consider the trade-offs between ease of management (having everything in one place) and performance/scalability.

This outlines how you can tweak CKEditor to store images in base64 directly in your Django app’s database. It involves some manual modifications, especially if opting for CKEditor 5, but it’s entirely feasible with some effort.