This question is related to (but perhaps not quite the same as):
Does Django have HTML helpers?
My problem is this: In Django, I am constantly reproducing the basic formatting for low-level database objects. Here's an example:
I have two classes, Person and Address. There are multiple Addresses for each Person, setup likeso (in their respective models.py)
class Person(models.Model):
...
class Address(models.Model):
contact = models.ForeignKey(Person)
Now, whenever I look at a Person, I want to see all their Addresses. So suppose Persons/views.py has something likeso:
def detail(request, person_id):
person = get_object_or_404( Person, pk=person_id )
return render_to_response('persons/details.html',
{ 'title' : unicode(person), 'addresses': person.address_set.all() } )
And, I have a template, persons/details.html, with code, for example, like-so:
{% extends "base.html" %}
{% for address in addresses %}
<b>{{ address.name }}</b>
{{ address.type }} <br>
{{ address.street_1 }}<br>
{{ address.street_2 }}<br>
{{ address.city }} {{ address.stateprov }} {{ address.postalcode }}<br>
{{ address.country }}
<hr>
{{ endfor }}
I am repeating this code quite a bit, often with minor variations, such when it's in a table, and then < br > must be substituted by < /td >< td >. Other times, I don't want a street_2 to display (or the < br > after it). All to say, there is fundamental logic that I want to express, that I am even more loath to tote around with block-and-copy!
What I want is a persons/details.html with, for example, the following:
{% extends "base.html" %}
{% for address in addresses %}
{% address.as_html4 %}
{% endfor %}
And if I want inline table, something likeso (I guess!):
{% extends "base.html" %}
<table><tr>
{% for address in addresses %}
<tr><td> {% address.as_html4 </td><td> %} </td></tr>
{% endfor %}
</table>
The question is, then: Where is the best place to put the formatting? The logic?
Django seem to have the following (plausible) options:
Put the formatting in models.py
Put the logic/formatting in views.py
Put the logic/formatting in some other sub-class of Person or Address (i.e. addresses/html4.py)
Create custom tags
Help / insight much appreciated!
The template tags are a way of telling Django that here comes something else than plain HTML. The template tags allows us to to do some programming on the server before sending HTML to the client.
autoescape. Controls the current auto-escaping behavior. This tag takes either on or off as an argument and that determines whether auto-escaping is in effect inside the block. The block is closed with an endautoescape ending tag.
Template inheritance. The most powerful – and thus the most complex – part of Django's template engine is template inheritance. Template inheritance allows you to build a base “skeleton” template that contains all the common elements of your site and defines blocks that child templates can override.
Sounds like an inclusion tag is what you're looking for. You could have a template and tag for each major variation and use the tag's arguments to customise the context for each template as required.
Basic tag definition:
@register.inclusion_tag('person/address.html')
def display_address(address):
return {'address': address}
Use in templates (assuming the templatetag module containing it has already been {% load %}
-ed):
{% display_address address %}
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