The Web Admin

The Evennia Web admin is a customized Django admin site used for manipulating the game database using a graphical interface. You have to be logged into the site to use it. It then appears as an Admin link the top of your website. You can also go to http://localhost:4001/admin when running locally.

Almost all actions done in the admin can also be done in-game by use of Admin- or Builder-commands.

Usage

The admin is pretty self-explanatory - you can see lists of each object type, create new instances of each type and also add new Attributes/tags them. The admin frontpage will give a summary of all relevant entities and how they are used.

There are a few use cases that requires some additional explanation though.

Adding objects to Attributes

The value field of an Attribute is pickled into a special form. This is usually not something you need to worry about (the admin will pickle/unpickle) the value for you), except if you want to store a database-object in an attribute. Such objects are actually stored as a tuple with object-unique data.

  1. Find the object you want to add to the Attribute. At the bottom of the first section you’ll find the field Serialized string. This string shows a Python tuple like

    ('__packed_dbobj__', ('objects', 'objectdb'), '2021:05:15-08:59:30:624660', 358)

    Mark and copy this tuple-string to your clipboard exactly as it stands (parentheses and all).

  2. Go to the entity that should have the new Attribute and create the Attribute. In its value field, paste the tuple-string you copied before. Save!

  3. If you want to store multiple objects in, say, a list, you can do so by literally typing a python list [tuple, tuple, tuple, ...] where you paste in the serialized tuple-strings with commas. At some point it’s probably easier to do this in code though …

Linking Accounts and Characters

In MULTISESSION_MODE 0 or 1, each connection can have one Account and one Character, usually with the same name. Normally this is done by the user creating a new account and logging in - a matching Character will then be created for them. You can however also do so manually in the admin:

  1. First create the complete Account in the admin.

  2. Next, create the Object (usually of Character typeclass) and name it the same as the Account. It also needs a command-set. The default CharacterCmdset is a good bet.

  3. In the Puppeting Account field, select the Account.

  4. Make sure to save everything.

  5. Click the Link to Account button (this will only work if you saved first). This will add the needed locks and Attributes to the Account to allow them to immediately connect to the Character when they next log in. This will (where possible):

    • Set account.db._last_puppet to the Character.

    • Add Character to account.db._playabel_characters list.

    • Add/extend the puppet: lock on the Character to include puppet:pid(<Character.id>)

Building with the Admin

It’s possible (if probably not very practical at scale) to build and describe rooms in the Admin.

  1. Create an Object of a Room-typeclass with a suitable room-name.

  2. Set an Attribute ‘desc’ on the room - the value of this Attribute is the room’s description.

  3. Add Tags of type ‘alias’ to add room-aliases (no type for regular tags)

Exits:

  1. Exits are Objects of an Exit typeclass, so create one.

  2. The exit has Location of the room you just created.

  3. Set Destination set to where the exit leads to.

  4. Set a ‘desc’ Attribute, this is shown if someone looks at the exit.

  5. Tags of type ‘alias’ are alternative names users can use to go through this exit.

Grant others access to the admin

The access to the admin is controlled by the Staff status flag on the Account. Without this flag set, even superusers will not even see the admin link on the web page. The staff-status has no in-game equivalence.

Only Superusers can change the Superuser status flag, and grant new permissions to accounts. The superuser is the only permission level that is also relevant in-game. User Permissions and Groups found on the Account admin page only affects the admin - they have no connection to the in-game Permissions (Player, Builder, Admin etc).

For a staffer with Staff status to be able to actually do anything, the superuser must grant at least some permissions for them on their Account. This can also be good in order to limit mistakes. It can be a good idea to not allow the Can delete Account permission, for example.

Important

If you grant staff-status and permissions to an Account and they still cannot access the admin’s content, try reloading the server.

Warning

If a staff member has access to the in-game ``py`` command, they can just as
well have their admin ``Superuser status`` set too. The reason is that ``py``
grants them all the power they need to set the ``is_superuser`` flag on their
account manually. There is a reason access to the ``py`` command must be
considered carefully ...

Customizing the web admin

Customizing the admin is a big topic and something beyond the scope of this documentation. See the official Django docs for the details. This is just a brief summary.

See the Website page for an overview of the components going into generating a web page. The Django admin uses the same principle except that Django provides a lot of tools to automate the admin-generation for us.

Admin templates are found in evennia/web/templates/admin/ but you’ll find this is relatively empty. This is because most of the templates are just inherited directly from their original location in the Django package (django/contrib/admin/templates/). So if you wanted to override one you’d have to copy it from there into your mygame/templates/admin/ folder. Same is true for CSS files.

The admin site’s backend code (the views) is found in evennia/web/admin/. It is organized into admin-classes, like ObjectAdmin, AccountAdmin etc. These automatically use the underlying database models to generate useful views for us without us havint go code the forms etc ourselves.

The top level AdminSite (the admin configuration referenced in django docs) is found in evennia/web/utils/adminsite.py.

Change the title of the admin

By default the admin’s title is Evennia web admin. To change this, add the following to your mygame/web/urls.py:

# in mygame/web/urls.py

# ...

from django.conf.admin import site

#...

site.site_header = "My great game admin"

Reload the server and the admin’s title header will have changed.