Access Model Data from Django Base Template

Question

I have a model Category, and I want its objects to always be displayed in a navigation menu in my base.html template (which all of my other templates extend).

I want to learn best-practices so would like to know what the correct/accepted way of providing this data to the template is.

Answer 1

Use a custom context processor:

In context_processors.py:

def categories(request):
    return {
        'categories': Categories.objects.all()
    }

And add it to your settings.py:

TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS = (
    # ... django's default context processors
    "your_app.context_processors.categories", 
)