Django templates: value of dictionary key with a space in it

Question

In a Django template, is there a way to get a value from a key that has a space in it? Eg, if I have a dict like:

{"Restaurant Name": Foo}

How can I reference that value in my template? Pseudo-syntax might be:

{{ entry['Restaurant Name'] }} 

Answer 1

There is no clean way to do this with the built-in tags. Trying to do something like:

{{ a.'Restaurant Name'}} or {{ a.Restaurant Name }}

will throw a parse error.

You could do a for loop through the dictionary (but it's ugly/inefficient):

{% for k, v in your_dict_passed_into_context %}
   {% ifequal k "Restaurant Name" %}
       {{ v }}
   {% endifequal %}
{% endfor %}

A custom tag would probably be cleaner:

from django import template
register = template.Library()

@register.simple_tag
def dictKeyLookup(the_dict, key):
   # Try to fetch from the dict, and if it's not found return an empty string.
   return the_dict.get(key, '')

and use it in the template like so:

{% dictKeyLookup your_dict_passed_into_context "Restaurant Name" %}

Or maybe try to restructure your dict to have "easier to work with" keys.

Answer 2

You can use a custom filter as well.

from django import template
register = template.Library()
    
@register.filter
def get(mapping, key):
    return mapping.get(key, '')

and within the template

{{ entry|get:"Restaurant Name" }}