Related
Some solutions provided on doing a Google search for "Django breadcrumbs" include using templates and block.super, basically just extending the base blocks and adding the current page to it. http://www.martin-geber.com/thought/2007/10/25/breadcrumbs-django-templates/
http://www.djangosnippets.org/snippets/1289/ - provides a template tag but I'm not sure this would work if you don't have your urls.py properly declared.
I'm wondering what's the best way? And if you have implemented breadcrumbs before how did you do it?
--- Edit --
My question was meant to be: is there a general accepted method of doing breadcrumbs in Django, but from the answers I see there is not, and there are many different solutions, I'm not sure who to award the correct answer to, as I used a variation of using the block.super method, while all the below answers would work.
I guess then this is too much of a subjective question.
Note: I provide the full snippet below, since djangosnippets has been finicky lately.
Cool, someone actually found my snippet :-) The use of my template tag is rather simple.
To answer your question there is no "built-in" django mechanism for dealing with breadcrumbs, but it does provide us with the next best thing: custom template tags.
Imagine you want to have breadcrumbs like so:
Services -> Programming
Services -> Consulting
Then you will probably have a few named urls: "services", and "programming", "consulting":
(r'^services/$',
'core.views.services',
{},
'services'),
(r'^services/programming$',
'core.views.programming',
{},
'programming'),
(r'^services/consulting$',
'core.views.consulting',
{},
'consulting'),
Now inside your html template (lets just look at consulting page) all you have to put is:
//consulting.html
{% load breadcrumbs %}
{% block breadcrumbs %}
{% breadcrumb_url 'Services' services %}
{% breadcrumb_url 'Consulting' consulting %}
{% endblock %}
If you want to use some kind of custom text within the breadcrumb, and don't want to link it, you can use breadcrumb tag instead.
//consulting.html
{% load breadcrumbs %}
{% block breadcrumbs %}
{% breadcrumb_url 'Services' services %}
{% breadcrumb_url 'Consulting' consulting %}
{% breadcrumb 'We are great!' %}
{% endblock %}
There are more involved situations where you might want to include an id of a particular object, which is also easy to do. This is an example that is more realistic:
{% load breadcrumbs %}
{% block breadcrumbs %}
{% breadcrumb_url 'Employees' employee_list %}
{% if employee.id %}
{% breadcrumb_url employee.company.name company_detail employee.company.id %}
{% breadcrumb_url employee.full_name employee_detail employee.id %}
{% breadcrumb 'Edit Employee ' %}
{% else %}
{% breadcrumb 'New Employee' %}
{% endif %}
{% endblock %}
DaGood breadcrumbs snippet
Provides two template tags to use in your HTML templates: breadcrumb and breadcrumb_url. The first allows creating of simple url, with the text portion and url portion. Or only unlinked text (as the last item in breadcrumb trail for example). The second, can actually take the named url with arguments! Additionally it takes a title as the first argument.
This is a templatetag file that should go into your /templatetags directory.
Just change the path of the image in the method create_crumb and you are good to go!
Don't forget to {% load breadcrumbs %} at the top of your html template!
from django import template
from django.template import loader, Node, Variable
from django.utils.encoding import smart_str, smart_unicode
from django.template.defaulttags import url
from django.template import VariableDoesNotExist
register = template.Library()
#register.tag
def breadcrumb(parser, token):
"""
Renders the breadcrumb.
Examples:
{% breadcrumb "Title of breadcrumb" url_var %}
{% breadcrumb context_var url_var %}
{% breadcrumb "Just the title" %}
{% breadcrumb just_context_var %}
Parameters:
-First parameter is the title of the crumb,
-Second (optional) parameter is the url variable to link to, produced by url tag, i.e.:
{% url person_detail object.id as person_url %}
then:
{% breadcrumb person.name person_url %}
#author Andriy Drozdyuk
"""
return BreadcrumbNode(token.split_contents()[1:])
#register.tag
def breadcrumb_url(parser, token):
"""
Same as breadcrumb
but instead of url context variable takes in all the
arguments URL tag takes.
{% breadcrumb "Title of breadcrumb" person_detail person.id %}
{% breadcrumb person.name person_detail person.id %}
"""
bits = token.split_contents()
if len(bits)==2:
return breadcrumb(parser, token)
# Extract our extra title parameter
title = bits.pop(1)
token.contents = ' '.join(bits)
url_node = url(parser, token)
return UrlBreadcrumbNode(title, url_node)
class BreadcrumbNode(Node):
def __init__(self, vars):
"""
First var is title, second var is url context variable
"""
self.vars = map(Variable,vars)
def render(self, context):
title = self.vars[0].var
if title.find("'")==-1 and title.find('"')==-1:
try:
val = self.vars[0]
title = val.resolve(context)
except:
title = ''
else:
title=title.strip("'").strip('"')
title=smart_unicode(title)
url = None
if len(self.vars)>1:
val = self.vars[1]
try:
url = val.resolve(context)
except VariableDoesNotExist:
print 'URL does not exist', val
url = None
return create_crumb(title, url)
class UrlBreadcrumbNode(Node):
def __init__(self, title, url_node):
self.title = Variable(title)
self.url_node = url_node
def render(self, context):
title = self.title.var
if title.find("'")==-1 and title.find('"')==-1:
try:
val = self.title
title = val.resolve(context)
except:
title = ''
else:
title=title.strip("'").strip('"')
title=smart_unicode(title)
url = self.url_node.render(context)
return create_crumb(title, url)
def create_crumb(title, url=None):
"""
Helper function
"""
crumb = """<span class="breadcrumbs-arrow">""" \
"""<img src="/media/images/arrow.gif" alt="Arrow">""" \
"""</span>"""
if url:
crumb = "%s<a href='%s'>%s</a>" % (crumb, url, title)
else:
crumb = "%s %s" % (crumb, title)
return crumb
The Django admin view modules have automatic breadcumbs, which are implemented like this:
{% block breadcrumbs %}
<div class="breadcrumbs">
{% trans 'Home' %}
{% block crumbs %}
{% if title %} › {{ title }}{% endif %}
{% endblock %}
</div>
{% endblock %}
So there is some kind of built-in support for this..
My view functions emit the breadcrumbs as a simple list.
Some information is kept in the user's session. Indirectly, however, it comes from the URL's.
Breadcrumbs are not a simple linear list of where they've been -- that's what browser history is for. A simple list of where they've been doesn't make a good breadcrumb trail because it doesn't reflect any meaning.
For most of our view functions, the navigation is pretty fixed, and based on template/view/URL design. In our cases, there's a lot of drilling into details, and the breadcrumbs reflect that narrowing -- we have a "realm", a "list", a "parent" and a "child". They form a simple hierarchy from general to specific.
In most cases, a well-defined URL can be trivially broken into a nice trail of breadcrumbs. Indeed, that's one test for good URL design -- the URL can be interpreted as breadcrumbs and displayed meaningfully to the users.
For a few view functions, where we present information that's part of a "many-to-many" join, for example, there are two candidate parents. The URL may say one thing, but the session's context stack says another.
For that reason, our view functions have to leave context clues in the session so we can emit breadcrumbs.
Try django-breadcrumbs — a pluggable middleware that add a breadcrumbs callable/iterable in your request object.
It supports simple views, generic views and Django FlatPages app.
I had the same issue and finally I've made simple django tempalate tag for it: https://github.com/prymitive/bootstrap-breadcrumbs
http://www.djangosnippets.org/snippets/1289/ - provides a template tag but i'm not sure this would work if you don't have your urls.py properly declared.
Nothing will work if you don't have your urls.py properly declared. Having said that, it doesn't look as though it imports from urls.py. In fact, it looks like to properly use that tag, you still have to pass the template some variables. Okay, that's not quite true: indirectly through the default url tag, which the breadcrumb tag calls. But as far as I can figure, it doesn't even actually call that tag; all occurrences of url are locally created variables.
But I'm no expert at parsing template tag definitions. So say somewhere else in the code it magically replicates the functionality of the url tag. The usage seems to be that you pass in arguments to a reverse lookup. Again, no matter what your project is, you urls.py should be configured so that any view can be reached with a reverse lookup. This is especially true with breadcrumbs. Think about it:
home > accounts > my account
Should accounts, ever hold an arbitrary, hardcoded url? Could "my account" ever hold an arbitrary, hardcoded url? Some way, somehow you're going to write breadcrumbs in such a way that your urls.py gets reversed. That's really only going to happen in one of two places: in your view, with a call to reverse, or in the template, with a call to a template tag that mimics the functionality of reverse. There may be reasons to prefer the former over the latter (into which the linked snippet locks you), but avoiding a logical configuration of your urls.py file is not one of them.
Try django-mptt.
Utilities for implementing Modified Preorder Tree Traversal (MPTT) with your Django Model classes and working with trees of Model instances.
This answer is just the same as #Andriy Drozdyuk (link). I just want to edit something so it works in Django 3.2 (in my case) and good in bootstrap too.
for create_crumb function (Remove the ">" bug in the current code)
def create_crumb(title, url=None):
"""
Helper function
"""
if url:
crumb = '<li class="breadcrumb-item">{}</li>'.format(url, title)
else:
crumb = '<li class="breadcrumb-item active" aria-current="page">{}</li>'.format(title)
return crumb
And for __init__ in BreadcrumbNode, add list() to make it subscriptable. And change smart_unicode to smart_text in render method
from django.utils.encoding import smart_text
class BreadcrumbNode(Node):
def __init__(self, vars):
"""
First var is title, second var is url context variable
"""
self.vars = list(map(Variable, vars))
def render(self, context):
title = self.vars[0].var
if title.find("'")==-1 and title.find('"')==-1:
try:
val = self.vars[0]
title = val.resolve(context)
except:
title = ''
else:
title=title.strip("'").strip('"')
title=smart_text(title)
And add this in base.html for the view for Bootstrap. Check the docs
<nav style="--bs-breadcrumb-divider: '>';" aria-label="breadcrumb">
<ol class="breadcrumb">
{% block breadcrumbs %}
{% endblock breadcrumbs %}
</ol>
</nav>
Obviously, no one best answer, but for practical reason I find that it is worth considering the naïve way. Just overwrite and rewrite the whole breadcrumb... (at least until the official django.contrib.breadcrumb released )
Without being too fancy, it is better to keep things simple. It helps the newcomer to understand. It is extremely customizable (e.g. permission checking, breadcrumb icon, separator characters, active breadcrumb, etc...)
Base Template
<!-- File: base.html -->
<html>
<body>
{% block breadcrumb %}
<ul class="breadcrumb">
<li>Dashboard</li>
</ul>
{% endblock breadcrumb %}
{% block content %}{% endblock content %}
</body>
</html>
Implementation Template
Later on each pages we rewrite and overwrite the whole breadcrumb block.
<!-- File: page.html -->
{% extends 'base.html' %}
{% block breadcrumb %}
<ul class="breadcrumb">
<li>Dashboard</li>
<li>Level 1</li>
<li class="active">Level 2</li>
</ul>
{% endblock breadcrumb %}
Practicallity
Realworld use cases:
Django Oscar: base template, simple bread
Django Admin: base template, simple bread, permission check breadcrumb
You could also reduce the boiler plate required to manage breadcrumbs using django-view-breadcrumbs, by adding a crumbs property to the view.
urls.py
urlpatterns = [
...
path('posts/<slug:slug>', views.PostDetail.as_view(), name='post_detail'),
...
]
views.py
from django.views.generic import DetailView
from view_breadcrumbs import DetailBreadcrumbMixin
class PostDetail(DetailBreadcrumbMixin, DetailView):
model = Post
template_name = 'app/post/detail.html'
base.html
{% load django_bootstrap_breadcrumbs %}
{% block breadcrumbs %}
{% render_breadcrumbs %}
{% endblock %}
Something like this may work for your situation:
Capture the entire URL in your view and make links from it. This will require modifying your urls.py, each view that needs to have breadcrumbs, and your templates.
First you would capture the entire URL in your urls.py file
original urls.py
...
(r'^myapp/$', 'myView'),
(r'^myapp/(?P<pk>.+)/$', 'myOtherView'),
...
new urls.py
...
(r'^(?P<whole_url>myapp/)$', 'myView'),
(r'^(?P<whole_url>myapp/(?P<pk>.+)/)$', 'myOtherView'),
...
Then in your view something like:
views.py
...
def myView(request, whole_url):
# dissect the url
slugs = whole_url.split('/')
# for each 'directory' in the url create a piece of bread
breadcrumbs = []
url = '/'
for slug in slugs:
if slug != '':
url = '%s%s/' % (url, slug)
breadcrumb = { 'slug':slug, 'url':url }
breadcrumbs.append(breadcrumb)
objects = {
'breadcrumbs': breadcrumbs,
}
return render_to_response('myTemplate.html', objects)
...
Which should be pulled out into a function that gets imported into the views that need it
Then in your template print out the breadcrumbs
myTemplate.html
...
<div class="breadcrumb-nav">
<ul>
{% for breadcrumb in breadcrumbs %}
<li>{{ breadcrumb.slug }}</li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>
</div>
...
One shortcoming of doing it this way is that as it stands you can only show the 'directory' part of the url as the link text. One fix for this off the top of my head (probably not a good one) would be to keep a dictionary in the file that defines the breadcrumb function.
Anyways that's one way you could accomplish breadcrumbs, cheers :)
You might want to try django-headcrumbs (don’t worry, they are not going to eat your brains).
It’s very lightweight and absolutely straightforward to use, all you have to do is annotate your views (because defining crumbs structure in templates sounds crazy to me) with a decorator that explains how to get back from the given view.
Here is an example from the documentation:
from headcrumbs.decorators import crumb
from headcrumbs.util import name_from_pk
#crumb('Staff') # This is the root crumb -- it doesn’t have a parent
def index(request):
# In our example you’ll fetch the list of divisions (from a database)
# and output it.
#crumb(name_from_pk(Division), parent=index)
def division(request, slug):
# Here you find all employees from the given division
# and list them.
There are also some utility functions (e.g. name_from_pk you can see in the example) that automagically generate nice names for your crumbs without you having to wright lots of code.
I've created template filter for this.
Apply your custom filter (I've named it 'makebreadcrumbs') to the request.path like this:
{% with request.resolver_match.namespace as name_space %}
{{ request.path|makebreadcrumbs:name_space|safe }}
{% endwith %}
We need to pass url namespace as an arg to our filter.
Also use safe filter, because our filter will be returning string that needs to be resolved as html content.
Custom filter should look like this:
#register.filter
def makebreadcrumbs(value, arg):
my_crumbs = []
crumbs = value.split('/')[1:-1] # slice domain and last empty value
for index, c in enumerate(crumbs):
if c == arg and len(crumbs) != 1:
# check it is a index of the app. example: /users/user/change_password - /users/ is the index.
link = '{}'.format(reverse(c+':index'), c)
else:
if index == len(crumbs)-1:
link = '<span>{}</span>'.format(c)
# the current bread crumb should not be a link.
else:
link = '{}'.format(reverse(arg+':' + c), c)
my_crumbs.append(link)
return ' > '.join(my_crumbs)
# return whole list of crumbs joined by the right arrow special character.
Important:
splited parts of the 'value' in our filter should be equal to the namespace in the urls.py, so the reverse method can be called.
Hope it helped.
A generic way, to collect all callable paths of the current url could be resolved by the following code snippet:
from django.urls import resolve, Resolver404
path_items = request.path.split("/")
path_items.pop(0)
path_tmp = ""
breadcrumb_config = OrderedDict()
for path_item in path_items:
path_tmp += "/" + path_item
try:
resolve(path_tmp)
breadcrumb_config[path_item] = {'is_representative': True, 'current_path': path_tmp}
except Resolver404:
breadcrumb_config[path_item] = {'is_representative': False, 'current_path': path_tmp}
If the resolve function can't get a real path from any urlpattern, the Resolver404 exception will be thrown. For those items we set the is_representative flag to false. The OrderedDict breadcrumb_config holds after that the breadcrumb items with there configuration.
For bootstrap 4 breadcrumb for example, you can do something like the following in your template:
<nav aria-label="breadcrumb">
<ol class="breadcrumb">
{% for crumb, values in BREADCRUMB_CONFIG.items %}
<li class="breadcrumb-item {% if forloop.last or not values.is_representative %}active{% endif %}" {% if forloop.last %}aria-current="page"{% endif %}>
{% if values.is_representative %}
<a href="{{values.current_path}}">
{{crumb}}
</a>
{% else %}
{{crumb}}
{% endif %}
</li>
{% endfor %}
</ol>
</nav>
Only the links which won't raises a 404 are clickable.
I believe there is nothing simpler than that (django 3.2):
def list(request):
return render(request, 'list.html', {
'crumbs' : [
("Today", "https://www.python.org/"),
("Is", "https://www.python.org/"),
("Sunday", "https://www.djangoproject.com/"),
]
})
Breadcrumbs.html
<div class="page-title-right">
<ol class="breadcrumb m-0">
{% if crumbs %}
{% for c in crumbs %}
<li class="breadcrumb-item {{c.2}}">{{c.0}}</li>
{% endfor %}
{% endif %}
</ol>
</div>
css:
.m-0 {
margin: 0!important;
}
.breadcrumb {
display: flex;
flex-wrap: wrap;
padding: 0 0;
margin-bottom: 1rem;
list-style: none;
border-radius: .25rem;
}
dl, ol, ul {
margin-top: 0;
margin-bottom: 1rem;
}
ol, ul {
padding-left: 2rem;
}
I have written a Django website with a simple home page containing a list of the following menu items:
Home
Users
Contact
I am now working on an optional Django app for this website. When installed, I would like it to add an extra menu item to the home page called "Extras".
What is the best way to achieve this sort of thing in Django?
I have considered adding something like this to my settings.py file:
MENU_ITEMS = [
'Home',
'Users',
'Contact',
]
Then inside my app's __init__.py, I would do something like this:
from django.conf import settings
settings.MENU_ITEMS.append('Extras')
And the views.py file would then pass this MENU_ITEMS list to the home page template. Is this the correct approach or is there a better way?
A tip i would give you from experience: don't mess with settings in runtime if possible, those variables are global and changing them may cause some nasty bugs. I'm not sure but with that code you may end up with something like:
MENU_ITEMS = [
'Home',
'Users',
'Contact',
'Extras',
'Extras',
'Extras',
'Extras',
]
Again, I'm not sure of that but you don't need to mess with your settings to achieve your purpose.
A way more clean approach is let your view manage your view. If all you want is a menu, create a base template and put the menu there and then extend from it. If you want to add anything in the future you will need to change that piece only (You can add conditions there if you want to render some parts depending on user or something).
For more details refer to the django docs.
For example:
<div class="header navbar">
<div class="container">
<a class="navbar-brand" href="/">{% endraw %}{{ cookiecutter.project_name }}{% raw %}</a>
<ul class="nav navbar-nav">
<li class="active">Home</li>
<li>About</li>
{% if request.user.is_authenticated %}
<li>{% trans "My Profile" %}</li>
<li>{% trans "Logout" %}</li>
{% else %}
<li>{% trans "Sign Up" %}</li>
<li>{% trans "Log In" %}</li>
{% endif %}
</ul>
</div>
</div>
{% block content %}
{% endblock content %}
If this is defined in your base template, the pages that extend it will show it by default, overriding only the section where the block content is located. If you want to add another link to your navbar just do something like:
<li class="active">My new item</li>
You define 'my_other_url' as usual in your urls.py.
This is the right approach to do what i think you are trying to do. You let the templates handle how your site looks, don't mess views (as in mvc) with your controller.
If you want to make the extra item optional you just have to send a flag or something to the template and use:
{% if flag %}
<li class="active">My new item</li>
{% endif %}
I have a problem with replacing part of website built in django with another content.
I have a code like
<section id='main_page'>
<div id="main_div">
<--! include kek.html content here -->
</div>
</section>
and I'd like to replace this comment with html placed in another html file.
I tried
def home(request):
return HttpResponse(render_to_string(
'index.html',{'bla':kek.html},
))
while in in index.html was
<section id='main_page'>
<div id="main_div">
{{ bla }}
</div>
</section>
but, it doesn't seem to work that way. I'm kinda new to django and python and I can't find any solution.
No, that wouldn't even run (kek.html is not defined in the view, so it's a NameError).
You can use the {% include %} tag in the template for this:
<section id='main_page'>
<div id="main_div">
{% include 'kek.html' %}
</div>
</section>
You should really do the Django tutorial, which explains how templates work (among other things).
Edit after comment
In that case you should treat the name of the include as a variable and pass it from the view:
{% include template_to_include %}
...
return render_to_response(
'index.html', {'template_to_include': 'kek.html'},
)
Note the quotes.
I have a table in my MySQL database named mysite_categories, there are 4 columns but for my purposes I just need two (name, base_url).
I currently have a template '*base_categories.html*' that I use to load the categories manually.
base_categories.html (trimmed down)
{% block content %}
<div class="section" style="float: right;">
<h4 class="gradient">Category List</h4>
<ul>
<li>Art</li>
<li>Biography</li>
<li>Science</li>
</ul>
</div>
{% endblock %}
What I'd like to do is pull the data from the db and use it in a for loop. Something like:
{% block content %}
<div class="section" style="float: right;">
<h4 class="gradient">Category List</h4>
<ul>
{% for category in mysite_categories %}
<li>{{ category.name }}</li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>
</div>
{% endblock %}
This is probably a newbie question but is it possible to something like this without creating an app?
*EDIT 1*
These are my app files, I'll admit this is probably junk, I have tried so many edits from so many different posts I'm sure I've broke it somewhere :P. I was going to remove it and start fresh but I figure I might as well post it to see where I might have gone wrong?
views.py
from django.shortcuts import render_to_response
from categories.models import categoryList
def index(request):
categories = categoryList.objects.all()
extra_context = {"categories": categories}
return render_to_response("myapp/index.html", extra_context)
models.py
from django.db import models
class categoryList(models.Model):
#id = models.IntegerField(unique=True, db_column='ID') # Field name made lowercase.
name = models.CharField(max_length=255L, unique=True)
base_url = models.CharField(max_length=255L, unique=True)
thumb = models.CharField(max_length=1L, unique=True, blank=True)
class Meta:
db_table = 'mysite_categories'
index.html
{% if error_message %}<p><strong>{{ error_message }}</strong></p>{% endif %}
<div class="section" style="float: right;">
<h4 class="gradient">Category List</h4>
<ul>
{% for category in categories %}
<li>{{ category.title }}</li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>
</div>
As mentioned, it's probably junk at this point, if any of you can help me straighten this out it would be appreciated!
*EDIT 2*
base_right_panel.html
{% block content %}
<div style="float: right;">
<div id="base_categories" style="margin: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px;">
{% block base_categories %}
{% include "base_categories.html" %}
{% endblock %}
</div>
</div>
{% endblock %}
*Edit 3*
base_categories.html
{% block content %}
<div class="section" style="float: right;">
<h4 class="gradient">Category List</h4>
<ul>
{% if categories %}
{% for category in categories %}
<li>{{ category.title }}</li>
{% endfor %}
{% else %}
<p>no data! {{ categories|length }}</p>
{% endif %}
</ul>
</div>
{% endblock %}
*EDIT 4*
(Application name was changed to CategoryList)
CategoryList/views.py
from django.views.generic import TemplateView
from CategoryList.models import CategorylistCategorylist #<-- Changed to match inspectdb result
class IndexView(TemplateView):
template_name="categorylist.html" #<-- Changed name from index.html for clarity
def get_context_data(self, **kwargs):
context = super(IndexView, self).get_context_data(**kwargs)
context["categories"] = CategorylistCategorylist.objects.all()
return context
CategoryList/models.py
from django.db import models
class CategorylistCategorylist(models.Model): #<-- Changed to match inspectdb
id = models.IntegerField(primary_key=True)
name = models.CharField(max_length=255L, unique=True)
base_url = models.CharField(max_length=255L, unique=True)
thumb = models.ImageField(upload_to="dummy", blank=True) #<-- Ignored inspectdb's suggestion for CharField
def __unicode__(self):
return self.name
# Re-added Meta to match inspectdb
class Meta:
db_table = 'categorylist_categorylist'
CategoryList/urls.py
from django.conf.urls.defaults import patterns, url, include
from django.contrib import admin
from django.conf import settings
from CategoryList import views
admin.autodiscover()
urlpatterns = patterns('',
url(r'^$', views.IndexView.as_view(), name='categorylist'),
)
if settings.DEBUG:
urlpatterns = patterns('',
url(r'^media/(?P<path>.*)$', 'django.views.static.serve',
{'document_root': settings.MEDIA_ROOT, 'show_indexes': True}),
url(r'', include('django.contrib.staticfiles.urls')),
) + urlpatterns
MySite/urls.py
from django.conf.urls import patterns, include, url
from django.contrib import admin
from django.conf import settings
from home import views as home_view
from CategoryList import views as index_view
admin.autodiscover()
urlpatterns = patterns('',
url(r'^$', home_view.HomeView.as_view(), name="home"),
url(r'^categories/$', index_view.IndexView.as_view(), name='categorylist'),#include('CategoryList.urls')),
url(r'^admin/', include(admin.site.urls)),
#url(r'^admin/doc/', include('django.contrib.admindocs.urls')),
)
if settings.DEBUG:
urlpatterns = patterns('',
url(r'^media/(?P<path>.*)$', 'django.views.static.serve',
{'document_root': settings.MEDIA_ROOT, 'show_indexes': True}),
url(r'', include('django.contrib.staticfiles.urls')),
) + urlpatterns
So far I can load the url "localhost:8000/categories" and I will see the list of category names appear on the right side of the screen as expected, but there is no template formatting applied. Inside my "*base_right_panel.html*" file I've tried "{% include "categorylist.html %}" to link directly to the application, which displays the correct template formatting, but displays the "{% else %}" response from "{% if categories %}" instead of the categories? I have tried changing the include to point to "categories/", which works in the browser, but it tells me it cannot find the template?
I'm sooo stumped right now..?
This answer is not meant to disagree with Alasdair's - it's just to add some more information on working with templates.
The core handler of an HTTP request to a Django application is the view. The view receives the HTTP request, as well as any arguments captured from the URL, and is responsible for returning an HttpResponse instance (or an instance of one of its subclasses) which will be returned to the browser.
The view is not bound to use any particular method to create the HttpResponse. Rendering a template to include information derived from the database and from request information or URL arguments is sufficiently common that there's code to support it, like the render shortcut or its mostly obsolete antecedent render_to_response, but this is by no means required. It's perfectly legitimate to have a view directly construct the HttpResponse:
def index(request):
return HttpResponse('This is an index page.')
Or, for very simple HTML:
def index(request):
return HttpResponse('<html><head><title>example</title></head><body>This is an index page.</body></html>')
In practice, I have often created HttpResponse instances directly to return json data or a dynamically created PDF or Excel file.
A simple way to slot information retrieved from the database into your response would be to use Python's built-in string interpolation:
def index(request):
return HttpResponse('Hello, %s' % request.user.email)
Or you could use the advanced string formatting options:
def index(request):
user_names = {}
user_names['first_name'] = request.user.first_name
user_names['last_name'] = request.user.last_name
return HttpResponse('Hello, %(first_name)s %(last_name)s' % user_names)
All this is building up to the point that it doesn't matter how you generate the text contents of your HttpResponse. All that matters is that you return one.
The template system is a powerful and extensible tool for generating text content, but that's all it does. If you look at the template docs about rendering a template, you'll see some examples that are almost exactly the same as the the string interpolation above.
render_to_response was a shortcut that would accept a template and a context and return an HttpResponse with the rendered contents of that template and context. Skipping over its context_instance and content_type parameters for the sake of demonstration, these two code blocks are identical in effect:
def index(request):
t = Template('Hello, {{ first_name }} {{ last_name }}')
c = Context({'first_name': request.user.first_name, 'last_name': request.user.last_name})
response_text = t.render(c)
return HttpResponse(response_text)
Assume a template index.txt exists as defined below, at the top level of an entry in the setting's TEMPLATE_DIRS tuple.
index.txt
Hello, {{ first_name}} {{ last_name}}
Then the view above could be replaced with:
def index(request):
t = get_template('index.html')
c = Context({'first_name': request.user.first_name, 'last_name': request.user.last_name})
response_text = t.render(c)
return HttpResponse(response_text)
Alternatively, you can skip the explicit creation of the context object and rendering of the template into a string thus:
def index(request):
return render_to_response('index.html', {'first_name': request.user.first_name, 'last_name': request.user.last_name})
On more recent versions of Django you should generally use the render shortcut rather than render_to_response - the details are a bit too much to go into if you're still struggling with getting context into your templates.
def index(request):
return render('index.html', {'first_name': request.user.first_name, 'last_name': request.user.last_name})
Of course, part of what makes templates useful is that the rendering engine can perform certain kinds of logic and lookup. I don't actually need to explictly keep looking up first_name and last_name - I can just pass in request as part of my context and look up its attributes in the templates:
index_showing_context.html
Hello, {{ request.user.first_name }} {{ request.user.last_name }}
def index_showing_context(request):
return render('index_showing_context.html', {'request': request})
Even passing in request isn't strictly necessary in that example, because one of the differences between render and render_to_response that I alluded to above is that request is always part of the context for render. But, again, that's an advanced subject.
So for your particular problem, it really doesn't matter where in your templates you render the data you want, as long as you have provided it to your view's context and are rendering the correct template. The template is in effect just a file name used to find and build a string, into which your context will be interpolated.
The {% include %} template tag is one way to mix template fragments into other templates. If I wanted to, I could set mine up like this:
header.html:
<head>
<title>This is a sample title.</title>
</head>
index.html:
<html>
{% include "header.html" %}
<body><p>This is my template body, {{ request.user.first_name }} {{ request.user.last_name }}.</p></body>
</html>
detail.html:
<html>
{% include "header.html" %}
<body><p>This is a detail page, probably for something selected in the context and given the context key 'object'.</p>
<p>{{ object }}</p>
</body>
</html>
That works fine, but it's not the only option. From your question, I see that you're using blocks and template inheritance. A common idiom is to define a base template that all or almost all other templates will inherit from:
base.html
<html>
<head>
<title>{% block title %}Default title{% endblock %}</title>
{% block extra_head_elements %}{% endblock %}
</title>
<body>
{% block body_header %}Standard page header here {% endblock %}
{% block body_content %}{% endblock %}
{% block body_footer %}Standard page footer here {% endblock %}
</body>
</html>
index.html
{% extends "base.html" %}
{% block title %}index {% endblock %}
{% block body_content %}<p>This is my template body, {{ request.user.first_name }} {{ request.user.last_name }}.</p>{% endblock %}
detail.html
{% extends "base.html" %}
{% block title %}detail{% endblock %}
{% block body_content %}<p>This is a detail page, probably for something selected in the context and given the context key 'object'.</p>
<p>{{ object }}</p>
{% endblock %}
So ultimately, I am not quite sure how you should best stitch together your right panel concept because it depends on the way you want your pages to work. If it's going to be present everywhere or almost everywhere, I would recommend putting it into a base template that the rest of your templates will extend. If you want it on exactly one page, just literally include it in that template. If you want it on some but not all pages, a template fragment that you can {% include %} is probably best.
The main thing is to understand how the template engine will compose your {% include %} and {% extends %} tags, and to provide the necessary data to the template's context in your view.
Edit:
If I wanted to have a view and template pair that just retrieved the categories, this is a simple way to lay it out using your example model code and rendering. There are other options.
index.html
<html>
<head><title>Simple category listing</title></head>
<body><p>The categories are:</p>
<ul>
{% for category in categories %}
<li>{{ category.name }}</li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>
</body>
</html>
view:
def index(request):
categories = categoryList.objects.all()
extra_context = {"categories": categories}
return render_to_response("index.html", extra_context)
If I wanted to reuse the category listing on multiple pages, that gets back into the include vs. extends discussion above. Either way, the template will always require your view to pass in categories as a context variable.
You could execute custom SQL directly to fetch categories in your view, and loop through the output in your template. This would not require an app.
If you create a model, you will be able to use the Django queryset api, which is very convenient, e.g.
mysite_categories = Category.objects.all()
This does require you to create an app. However, creating an app is really easy, just use the startapp command.
python manage.py startapp myapp
Once you've created your app, you can use the inspectdb command to inspect your database, and create a model for your mysite_categories table.
I have a webapp that lists all of my artists, albums and songs when the appropriate link is clicked. I make extensive use of generic views (object_list/detail) and named urls but I am coming across an annoyance. I have three templates that pretty much output the exact same html that look just like this:
{% extends "base.html" %}
{% block content %}
<div id="content">
<ul id="starts-with">
{% for starts_with in starts_with_list %}
<li>{{ starts_with|upper }}</li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>
<ul>
{% for song in songs_list %}
<li>{{ song.title }}</li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>
</div>
{% endblock content %}
My artist and album template look pretty much the same and I'd like to combine the three template's into one. The fact that my variables start with song can easily be changed to the default obj. It's my <ul id="starts-with"> named url I don't know how to correct. Obviously I want it to link to a specific album/artist/song using the named urls in my urls.py but I don't know how to make it context aware. Any suggestions?
urls.py:
urlpatterns = patterns('tlkmusic.apps.tlkmusic_base.views',
# (r'^$', index),
url(r'^artists/$', artist_list, name='artist_list'),
url(r'^artists/(?P<starts_with>\w)/$', artist_list, name='artist_list_x'),
url(r'^artist/(?P<artist_id>\d+)/$', artist_detail, name='artist_detail'),
url(r'^albums/$', album_list, name='album_list'),
url(r'^albums/(?P<starts_with>\w)/$', album_list, name='album_list_x'),
url(r'^album/(?P<album_id>\w)/$', album_detail, name='album_detail'),
url(r'^songs/$', song_list, name='song_list'),
url(r'^songs/(?P<starts_with>\w)/$', song_list, name='song_list_x'),
url(r'^song/(?P<song_id>\w)/$', song_detail, name='song_detail'),
)
You could define url patterns for a generic object_type instead of individually for artists, albums and songs:
urlpatterns = patterns('tlkmusic.apps.tlkmusic_base.views',
# (r'^$', index),
url(r'^(?P<object_type>\w+)/$', music_object_list, name='music_object_list'),
url(r'^(?P<object_type>\w+)/(?P<starts_with>\w)/$', music_object_list, name='music_object_list_x'),
url(r'^(?P<object_type>\w+)/(?P<object_id>\d+)/$', music_object_detail, name='music_object_detail'),
)
Then in your template, your url tag becomes
{% url music_object_list_x object_type starts_with %} *
You may find you only need one view, music_object_list. If you find you need different functions for each object type, then call the individual functions in music_object_list.
def music_object_list(request, object_type, starts_with=None):
if object_type == 'artists':
return artist_list(request, starts_with=starts_with)
elif object_type == 'albums':
return album_list(request, starts_with=starts_with)
...
If you are using django.views.generic.list_detail.object_list, then remember to add object_type to the extra_context dictionary. This will add object_type to the template context, allowing the url tag to work.
extra_context = {'object_type': 'songs', ...}
* This is the new url tag syntax for Django 1.2. For older versions you would use a comma.
{% url music_object_list_x object_type,starts_with %}
See the docs (Current, 1.1) for more information