Templates¶

A template is simply a text file. It can generate any text-based format (HTML, XML, CSV, etc.).

A template contains variables, which get replaced with values when the template is evaluated, and tags, which control the logic of the template.

Below is a minimal template that illustrates a few basics. Each element will be explained later in this document.:

{% extends "base_generic.html" %}

{% block title %}{{ section.title }}{% endblock %}

{% block content %}
<h1>{{ section.title }}</h1>

{% for story in story_list %}
<h2>
  <a href="{{ story.get_absolute_url }}">
    {{ story.headline|upper }}
  </a>
</h2>
<p>{{ story.tease|truncatewords:"100" }}</p>
{% endfor %}
{% endblock %}

Variables¶

Variables look like this: {{ variable }}. When the template engine encounters a variable, it evaluates that variable and replaces it with the result.

Use a dot (.) to access attributes of a variable.

In the above example, {{ section.title }} will be replaced with the title attribute of the section object.

If you use a variable that doesn't exist, the template system will insert the value of the TEMPLATE_STRING_IF_INVALID setting, which is set to '' (the empty string) by default.

See Using the built-in reference, below, for help on finding what variables are available in a given template.

Filters¶

You can modify variables for display by using filters.

Filters look like this: {{ name|lower }}. This displays the value of the {{ name }} variable after being filtered through the lower filter, which converts text to lowercase. Use a pipe (|) to apply a filter.

Filters can be "chained." The output of one filter is applied to the next. {{ text|escape|linebreaks }} is a common idiom for escaping text contents, then converting line breaks to <p> tags.

Some filters take arguments. A filter argument looks like this: {{ bio|truncatewords:30 }}. This will display the first 30 words of the bio variable.

Filter arguments that contain spaces must be quoted; for example, to join a list with commas and spaced you'd use {{ list|join:", " }}.

Django provides about thirty built-in template filters. You can read all about them in the built-in filter reference. To give you a taste of what's available, here are some of the more commonly used template filters:

default

If a variable is false or empty, use given default. Otherwise, use the value of the variable

For example:

{{ value|default:"nothing" }}

If value isn't provided or is empty, the above will display "nothing".

length

Returns the length of the value. This works for both strings and lists; for example:

{{ value|length }}

If value is ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd'], the output will be 4.

striptags

Strips all [X]HTML tags. For example:

{{ value|striptags }}

If value is "<b>Joel</b> <button>is</button> a <span>slug</span>", the output will be "Joel is a slug".

Again, these are just a few examples; see the built-in filter reference for the complete list.

You can also create your own custom template filters; see Custom template tags and filters.

Tags¶

Tags look like this: {% tag %}. Tags are more complex than variables: Some create text in the output, some control flow by performing loops or logic, and some load external information into the template to be used by later variables.

Some tags require beginning and ending tags (i.e. {% tag %} ... tag contents ... {% endtag %}).

Django ships with about two dozen built-in template tags. You can read all about them in the built-in tag reference. To give you a taste of what's available, here are some of the more commonly used tags:

for

Loop over each item in an array. For example, to display a list of athletes provided in athlete_list:

<ul>
{% for athlete in athlete_list %}
    <li>{{ athlete.name }}</li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>

if and else

Evaluates a variable, and if that variable is "true" the contents of the block are displayed:

{% if athlete_list %}
    Number of athletes: {{ athlete_list|length }}
{% else %}
    No athletes.
{% endif %}

In the above, if athlete_list is not empty, the number of athletes will be displayed by the {{ athlete_list|length }} variable.

ifequal and ifnotequal

Display some contents if two arguments are or are not equal. For example:

{% ifequal athlete.name coach.name %}
    ...
{% endifequal %}

Or:

{% ifnotequal athlete.name "Joe" %}
    ...
{% endifnotequal %}

block and extends

Set up template inheritance (see below), a powerful way of cutting down on "boilerplate" in templates.

Again, the above is only a selection of the whole list; see the built-in tag reference for the complete list.

You can also create your own custom template tags; see Custom template tags and filters.

Comments¶

To comment-out part of a line in a template, use the comment syntax: {# #}.

For example, this template would render as 'hello':

{# greeting #}hello

A comment can contain any template code, invalid or not. For example:

{# {% if foo %}bar{% else %} #}

This syntax can only be used for single-line comments (no newlines are permitted between the {# and #} delimiters). If you need to comment out a multiline portion of the template, see the comment 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.

It's easiest to understand template inheritance by starting with an example:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css" />
    <title>{% block title %}My amazing site{% endblock %}</title>
</head>

<body>
    <div id="sidebar">
        {% block sidebar %}
        <ul>
            <li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
            <li><a href="/blog/">Blog</a></li>
        </ul>
        {% endblock %}
    </div>

    <div id="content">
        {% block content %}{% endblock %}
    </div>
</body>
</html>

This template, which we'll call base.html, defines a simple HTML skeleton document that you might use for a simple two-column page. It's the job of "child" templates to fill the empty blocks with content.

In this example, the {% block %} tag defines three blocks that child templates can fill in. All the block tag does is to tell the template engine that a child template may override those portions of the template.

A child template might look like this:

{% extends "base.html" %}

{% block title %}My amazing blog{% endblock %}

{% block content %}
{% for entry in blog_entries %}
    <h2>{{ entry.title }}</h2>
    <p>{{ entry.body }}</p>
{% endfor %}
{% endblock %}

The {% extends %} tag is the key here. It tells the template engine that this template "extends" another template. When the template system evaluates this template, first it locates the parent -- in this case, "base.html".

At that point, the template engine will notice the three {% block %} tags in base.html and replace those blocks with the contents of the child template. Depending on the value of blog_entries, the output might look like:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css" />
    <title>My amazing blog</title>
</head>

<body>
    <div id="sidebar">
        <ul>
            <li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
            <li><a href="/blog/">Blog</a></li>
        </ul>
    </div>

    <div id="content">
        <h2>Entry one</h2>
        <p>This is my first entry.</p>

        <h2>Entry two</h2>
        <p>This is my second entry.</p>
    </div>
</body>
</html>

Note that since the child template didn't define the sidebar block, the value from the parent template is used instead. Content within a {% block %} tag in a parent template is always used as a fallback.

You can use as many levels of inheritance as needed. One common way of using inheritance is the following three-level approach:

• Create a base.html template that holds the main look-and-feel of your site.
• Create a base_SECTIONNAME.html template for each "section" of your site. For example, base_news.html, base_sports.html. These templates all extend base.html and include section-specific styles/design.
• Create individual templates for each type of page, such as a news article or blog entry. These templates extend the appropriate section template.

This approach maximizes code reuse and makes it easy to add items to shared content areas, such as section-wide navigation.

Here are some tips for working with inheritance:

• If you use {% extends %} in a template, it must be the first template tag in that template. Template inheritance won't work, otherwise.

• More {% block %} tags in your base templates are better. Remember, child templates don't have to define all parent blocks, so you can fill in reasonable defaults in a number of blocks, then only define the ones you need later. It's better to have more hooks than fewer hooks.

• If you find yourself duplicating content in a number of templates, it probably means you should move that content to a {% block %} in a parent template.

• If you need to get the content of the block from the parent template, the {{ block.super }} variable will do the trick. This is useful if you want to add to the contents of a parent block instead of completely overriding it. Data inserted using {{ block.super }} will not be automatically escaped (see the next section), since it was already escaped, if necessary, in the parent template.

• For extra readability, you can optionally give a name to your {% endblock %} tag. For example:

  {% block content %}
  ...
  {% endblock content %}
  

  In larger templates, this technique helps you see which {% block %} tags are being closed.

Finally, note that you can't define multiple {% block %} tags with the same name in the same template. This limitation exists because a block tag works in "both" directions. That is, a block tag doesn't just provide a hole to fill -- it also defines the content that fills the hole in the parent. If there were two similarly-named {% block %} tags in a template, that template's parent wouldn't know which one of the blocks' content to use.

Automatic HTML escaping¶

When generating HTML from templates, there's always a risk that a variable will include characters that affect the resulting HTML. For example, consider this template fragment:

Hello, {{ name }}.

At first, this seems like a harmless way to display a user's name, but consider what would happen if the user entered his name as this:

<script>alert('hello')</script>

With this name value, the template would be rendered as:

Hello, <script>alert('hello')</script>

...which means the browser would pop-up a JavaScript alert box!

Similarly, what if the name contained a '<' symbol, like this?

<b>username

That would result in a rendered template like this:

Hello, <b>username

...which, in turn, would result in the remainder of the Web page being bolded!

Clearly, user-submitted data shouldn't be trusted blindly and inserted directly into your Web pages, because a malicious user could use this kind of hole to do potentially bad things. This type of security exploit is called a Cross Site Scripting (XSS) attack.

To avoid this problem, you have two options:

• One, you can make sure to run each untrusted variable through the escape filter (documented below), which converts potentially harmful HTML characters to unharmful ones. This was the default solution in Django for its first few years, but the problem is that it puts the onus on you, the developer / template author, to ensure you're escaping everything. It's easy to forget to escape data.
• Two, you can take advantage of Django's automatic HTML escaping. The remainder of this section describes how auto-escaping works.

By default in Django, every template automatically escapes the output of every variable tag. Specifically, these five characters are escaped:

• < is converted to &lt;
• > is converted to &gt;
• ' (single quote) is converted to &#39;
• " (double quote) is converted to &quot;
• & is converted to &amp;

Again, we stress that this behavior is on by default. If you're using Django's template system, you're protected.

This will be escaped: {{ data }}
This will not be escaped: {{ data|safe }}

This will be escaped: <b>
This will not be escaped: <b>

{% autoescape off %}
    Hello {{ name }}
{% endautoescape %}

Auto-escaping is on by default. Hello {{ name }}

{% autoescape off %}
    This will not be auto-escaped: {{ data }}.

    Nor this: {{ other_data }}
    {% autoescape on %}
        Auto-escaping applies again: {{ name }}
    {% endautoescape %}
{% endautoescape %}

# base.html

{% autoescape off %}
<h1>{% block title %}{% endblock %}</h1>
{% block content %}
{% endblock %}
{% endautoescape %}


# child.html

{% extends "base.html" %}
{% block title %}This & that{% endblock %}
{% block content %}{{ greeting }}{% endblock %}

<h1>This & that</h1>
<b>Hello!</b>

{{ data|default:"This is a string literal." }}

{{ data|default:"3 < 2" }}

{{ data|default:"3 < 2" }}  <-- Bad! Don't do this.

Using the built-in reference¶

Django's admin interface includes a complete reference of all template tags and filters available for a given site. To see it, go to your admin interface and click the "Documentation" link in the upper right of the page.

The reference is divided into 4 sections: tags, filters, models, and views.

The tags and filters sections describe all the built-in tags (in fact, the tag and filter references below come directly from those pages) as well as any custom tag or filter libraries available.

The views page is the most valuable. Each URL in your site has a separate entry here, and clicking on a URL will show you:

• The name of the view function that generates that view.
• A short description of what the view does.
• The context, or a list of variables available in the view's template.
• The name of the template or templates that are used for that view.

Each view documentation page also has a bookmarklet that you can use to jump from any page to the documentation page for that view.

Because Django-powered sites usually use database objects, the models section of the documentation page describes each type of object in the system along with all the fields available on that object.

Taken together, the documentation pages should tell you every tag, filter, variable and object available to you in a given template.

Custom tag and filter libraries¶

Certain applications provide custom tag and filter libraries. To access them in a template, use the {% load %} tag:

{% load comments %}

{% comment_form for blogs.entries entry.id with is_public yes %}

In the above, the load tag loads the comments tag library, which then makes the comment_form tag available for use. Consult the documentation area in your admin to find the list of custom libraries in your installation.

The {% load %} tag can take multiple library names, separated by spaces. Example:

{% load comments i18n %}

See Custom template tags and filters for information on writing your own custom template libraries.