Customization

Datasette provides a number of ways of customizing the way data is displayed.

Custom CSS and JavaScript

When you launch Datasette, you can specify a custom metadata file like this:

datasette mydb.db --metadata metadata.json

Your metadata.json file can include links that look like this:

{
    "extra_css_urls": [
        "https://simonwillison.net/static/css/all.bf8cd891642c.css"
    ],
    "extra_js_urls": [
        "https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.2.1.slim.min.js"
    ]
}

The extra CSS and JavaScript files will be linked in the <head> of every page.

You can also specify a SRI (subresource integrity hash) for these assets:

{
    "extra_css_urls": [
        {
            "url": "https://simonwillison.net/static/css/all.bf8cd891642c.css",
            "sri": "sha384-9qIZekWUyjCyDIf2YK1FRoKiPJq4PHt6tp/ulnuuyRBvazd0hG7pWbE99zvwSznI"
        }
    ],
    "extra_js_urls": [
        {
            "url": "https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.2.1.slim.min.js",
            "sri": "sha256-k2WSCIexGzOj3Euiig+TlR8gA0EmPjuc79OEeY5L45g="
        }
    ]
}

Modern browsers will only execute the stylesheet or JavaScript if the SRI hash matches the content served. You can generate hashes using www.srihash.org

CSS classes on the <body>

Every default template includes CSS classes in the body designed to support custom styling.

The index template (the top level page at /) gets this:

<body class="index">

The database template (/dbname) gets this:

<body class="db db-dbname">

The custom SQL template (/dbname?sql=...) gets this:

<body class="query db-dbname">

The table template (/dbname/tablename) gets:

<body class="table db-dbname table-tablename">

The row template (/dbname/tablename/rowid) gets:

<body class="row db-dbname table-tablename">

The db-x and table-x classes use the database or table names themselves if they are valid CSS identifiers. If they aren’t, we strip any invalid characters out and append a 6 character md5 digest of the original name, in order to ensure that multiple tables which resolve to the same stripped character version still have different CSS classes.

Some examples:

"simple" => "simple"
"MixedCase" => "MixedCase"
"-no-leading-hyphens" => "no-leading-hyphens-65bea6"
"_no-leading-underscores" => "no-leading-underscores-b921bc"
"no spaces" => "no-spaces-7088d7"
"-" => "336d5e"
"no $ characters" => "no--characters-59e024"

<td> and <th> elements also get custom CSS classes reflecting the database column they are representing, for example:

<table>
    <thead>
        <tr>
            <th class="col-id" scope="col">id</th>
            <th class="col-name" scope="col">name</th>
        </tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody>
        <tr>
            <td class="col-id"><a href="...">1</a></td>
            <td class="col-name">SMITH</td>
        </tr>
    </tbody>
</table>

Serving static files

Datasette can serve static files for you, using the --static option. Consider the following directory structure:

metadata.json
static/styles.css
static/app.js

You can start Datasette using --static static:static/ to serve those files from the /static/ mount point:

$ datasette -m metadata.json --static static:static/ --memory

The following URLs will now serve the content from those CSS and JS files:

http://localhost:8001/static/styles.css
http://localhost:8001/static/app.js

You can reference those files from metadata.json like so:

{
    "extra_css_urls": [
        "/static/styles.css"
    ],
    "extra_js_urls": [
        "/static/app.js"
    ]
}

Publishing static assets

The datasette publish command can be used to publish your static assets, using the same syntax as above:

$ datasette publish cloudrun mydb.db --static static:static/

This will upload the contents of the static/ directory as part of the deployment, and configure Datasette to correctly serve the assets.

Custom templates

By default, Datasette uses default templates that ship with the package.

You can over-ride these templates by specifying a custom --template-dir like this:

datasette mydb.db --template-dir=mytemplates/

Datasette will now first look for templates in that directory, and fall back on the defaults if no matches are found.

It is also possible to over-ride templates on a per-database, per-row or per- table basis.

The lookup rules Datasette uses are as follows:

Index page (/):
    index.html

Database page (/mydatabase):
    database-mydatabase.html
    database.html

Custom query page (/mydatabase?sql=...):
    query-mydatabase.html
    query.html

Canned query page (/mydatabase/canned-query):
    query-mydatabase-canned-query.html
    query-mydatabase.html
    query.html

Table page (/mydatabase/mytable):
    table-mydatabase-mytable.html
    table.html

Row page (/mydatabase/mytable/id):
    row-mydatabase-mytable.html
    row.html

Table of rows and columns include on table page:
    _table-table-mydatabase-mytable.html
    _table-mydatabase-mytable.html
    _table.html

Table of rows and columns include on row page:
    _table-row-mydatabase-mytable.html
    _table-mydatabase-mytable.html
    _table.html

If a table name has spaces or other unexpected characters in it, the template filename will follow the same rules as our custom <body> CSS classes - for example, a table called “Food Trucks” will attempt to load the following templates:

table-mydatabase-Food-Trucks-399138.html
table.html

You can find out which templates were considered for a specific page by viewing source on that page and looking for an HTML comment at the bottom. The comment will look something like this:

<!-- Templates considered: *query-mydb-tz.html, query-mydb.html, query.html -->

This example is from the canned query page for a query called “tz” in the database called “mydb”. The asterisk shows which template was selected - so in this case, Datasette found a template file called query-mydb-tz.html and used that - but if that template had not been found, it would have tried for query-mydb.html or the default query.html.

It is possible to extend the default templates using Jinja template inheritance. If you want to customize EVERY row template with some additional content you can do so by creating a row.html template like this:

{% extends "default:row.html" %}

{% block content %}
<h1>EXTRA HTML AT THE TOP OF THE CONTENT BLOCK</h1>
<p>This line renders the original block:</p>
{{ super() }}
{% endblock %}

Note the default:row.html template name, which ensures Jinja will inherit from the default template.

The _table.html template is included by both the row and the table pages, and a list of rows. The default _table.html template renders them as an HTML template and can be seen here.

You can provide a custom template that applies to all of your databases and tables, or you can provide custom templates for specific tables using the template naming scheme described above.

If you want to present your data in a format other than an HTML table, you can do so by looping through display_rows in your own _table.html template. You can use {{ row["column_name"] }} to output the raw value of a specific column.

If you want to output the rendered HTML version of a column, including any links to foreign keys, you can use {{ row.display("column_name") }}.

Here is an example of a custom _table.html template:

{% for row in display_rows %}
    <div>
        <h2>{{ row["title"] }}</h2>
        <p>{{ row["description"] }}<lp>
        <p>Category: {{ row.display("category_id") }}</p>
    </div>
{% endfor %}