Customize templates in a third party Django app

Question

I'm using a third party app (django-social-share) in my Django project but I need to customize the templates. I'm not sure how to go about doing that--everything I try keeps using the default templates.

The current default template is stored in:

django-social-share/django_social_share/templates/django_social_share/templatetags/post_to_facebook.html. 

I've made my custom one in:

{{project_root}}/{{app_name}}/templates/django_social_share/templatetags/post_to_facebook.html

My templates setting:

TEMPLATES = [
    {
        'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',
        'DIRS': [],
        'OPTIONS': {
            'context_processors': [
                'django.template.context_processors.debug',
                'django.template.context_processors.request',
                'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
                'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',
                'django.core.context_processors.request',
                'mainsite.context_processors.google_api'
            ],
            'loaders': (
                'django.template.loaders.filesystem.Loader',
                'django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader',
                'django.template.loaders.eggs.Loader',
            ),
        },
    },
]

Answer 1

You can put the template in a separate app within your project. Django looks for templates in your apps in the order they are defined in INSTALLED_APPS, and uses the first match:

The order of INSTALLED_APPS is significant! For example, if you want to customize the Django admin, you might choose to override the standard admin/base_site.html template, from django.contrib.admin, with your own admin/base_site.html in myproject.polls. You must then make sure that your myproject.polls comes before django.contrib.admin in INSTALLED_APPS, otherwise django.contrib.admin’s will be loaded first and yours will be ignored. (source)

So create an app, called e.g. social_share_templates, and put it in INSTALLED_APPS before django_social_share. Then add the template to this folder:

{{project_root}}/social_share_templates/templates/django_social_share/templatetags/post_to_facebook.html

The reason your current configuration does not work, is that your local app has the same name as the app in site-packages. If your local app is an actual python module, you won't be able to use the app in site-packages. Otherwise, Django just looks for the templates in the app in site-packages.

Answer 2

To just change templates you don't have to fork an app. Just make sure you have set up your template loaders correctly. Usually you'd like something as: (documentation)

'loaders': [
    'django.template.loaders.filesystem.Loader',
    'django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader',
    'django.template.loaders.eggs.Loader',
],

This means (for your case take django_social_share/templatetags/post_to_gplus.html as an example) - when looking for the template Django will try to find it:

1. in your project's template directory/directories, specified in DIRS
   so if you have a file in <project_root>/templates/django_social_share/templatetags/post_to_gplus.html it will take this one.

2. in your 'local' apps templates dir, if in INSTALLED_APPS. so you could create e.g. a social_share_custom app, add it to INSTALLED_APPS and create a template at:
   <project_root>/social_share_custom/templates/django_social_share/templatetags/post_to_gplus.html
   This approach has the benefit that you could re-use the social_share_custom easily in other projects.

3. in the templates directory of your apps installed via pip (or other ways)