Django, creating a custom 500/404 error page

Question

Under your main views.py add your own custom implementation of the following two views, and just set up the templates 404.html and 500.html with what you want to display.

With this solution, no custom code needs to be added to urls.py

Here's the code:

from django.shortcuts import render_to_response
from django.template import RequestContext


def handler404(request, *args, **argv):
    response = render_to_response('404.html', {},
                                  context_instance=RequestContext(request))
    response.status_code = 404
    return response


def handler500(request, *args, **argv):
    response = render_to_response('500.html', {},
                                  context_instance=RequestContext(request))
    response.status_code = 500
    return response

Update

handler404 and handler500 are exported Django string configuration variables found in django/conf/urls/__init__.py. That is why the above config works.

To get the above config to work, you should define the following variables in your urls.py file and point the exported Django variables to the string Python path of where these Django functional views are defined, like so:

# project/urls.py

handler404 = 'my_app.views.handler404'
handler500 = 'my_app.views.handler500'

Update for Django 2.0

Signatures for handler views were changed in Django 2.0: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.0/ref/views/#error-views

If you use views as above, handler404 will fail with message:

"handler404() got an unexpected keyword argument 'exception'"

In such case modify your views like this:

def handler404(request, exception, template_name="404.html"):
    response = render_to_response(template_name)
    response.status_code = 404
    return response

Official answer:

Here is the link to the official documentation on how to set up custom error views:

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/stable/topics/http/views/#customizing-error-views

It says to add lines like these in your URLconf (setting them anywhere else will have no effect):

handler404 = 'mysite.views.my_custom_page_not_found_view'
handler500 = 'mysite.views.my_custom_error_view'
handler403 = 'mysite.views.my_custom_permission_denied_view'
handler400 = 'mysite.views.my_custom_bad_request_view'

You can also customise the CSRF error view by modifying the setting CSRF_FAILURE_VIEW.

Default error handlers:

It's worth reading the documentation of the default error handlers, page_not_found, server_error, permission_denied and bad_request. By default, they use these templates if they can find them, respectively: 404.html, 500.html, 403.html, and 400.html.

So if all you want to do is make pretty error pages, just create those files in a TEMPLATE_DIRS directory, you don't need to edit URLConf at all. Read the documentation to see which context variables are available.

In Django 1.10 and later, the default CSRF error view uses the template 403_csrf.html.

Gotcha:

Don't forget that DEBUG must be set to False for these to work, otherwise, the normal debug handlers will be used.

Add these lines in urls.py

urls.py

from django.conf.urls import (
handler400, handler403, handler404, handler500
)

handler400 = 'my_app.views.bad_request'
handler403 = 'my_app.views.permission_denied'
handler404 = 'my_app.views.page_not_found'
handler500 = 'my_app.views.server_error'

# ...

and implement our custom views in views.py.

views.py

from django.shortcuts import (
render_to_response
)
from django.template import RequestContext

# HTTP Error 400
def bad_request(request):
    response = render_to_response(
        '400.html',
        context_instance=RequestContext(request)
        )

        response.status_code = 400

        return response

# ...

From the page you referenced:

When you raise Http404 from within a view, Django will load a special view devoted to handling 404 errors. It finds it by looking for the variable handler404 in your root URLconf (and only in your root URLconf; setting handler404 anywhere else will have no effect), which is a string in Python dotted syntax – the same format the normal URLconf callbacks use. A 404 view itself has nothing special: It’s just a normal view.

So I believe you need to add something like this to your urls.py:

handler404 = 'views.my_404_view'

and similar for handler500.

Django 3.0+

here is link how to customize error views

here is link how to render a view

in the urls.py (the main one, in project folder), put:

handler404 = 'my_app_name.views.custom_page_not_found_view'
handler500 = 'my_app_name.views.custom_error_view'
handler403 = 'my_app_name.views.custom_permission_denied_view'
handler400 = 'my_app_name.views.custom_bad_request_view'

and in the mentioned app (my_app_name) put in the views.py:

def custom_page_not_found_view(request, exception):
    return render(request, "errors/404.html", {})

def custom_error_view(request, exception=None):
    return render(request, "errors/500.html", {})

def custom_permission_denied_view(request, exception=None):
    return render(request, "errors/403.html", {})

def custom_bad_request_view(request, exception=None):
    return render(request, "errors/400.html", {})

NOTE: errors/404.html is the path if you place your files into the projects (not the apps) template foldertemplates/errors/404.html so please place the files where you want and write the right path.

NOTE 2: After page reload, if you still see the old template, change in settings.py DEBUG=True, save it, and then again to False and save again (that will restart the server and collect the new files).

If all you need is to show custom pages which have some fancy error messages for your site when DEBUG = False, then add two templates named 404.html and 500.html in your templates directory and it will automatically pick up this custom pages when a 404 or 500 is raised.