Django App Namespace Template Loader

Provides a template loader that allows you to load a template from a specific application. This allows you to both extend and override a template at the same time.

The default Django loaders require you to copy the entire template you want to override, even if you only want to override one small block.

This is the issue that this package tries to resolve.

Examples:

You want to change the titles of the admin site, you would originally created this template:

$ cat my-project/templates/admin/base_site.html
{% extends "admin/base.html" %}
{% load i18n %}

{% block title %}{{ title }} | My Project{% endblock %}

{% block branding %}
<h1 id="site-name">My Project</h1>
{% endblock %}

{% block nav-global %}{% endblock %}

Extend and override version with a namespace:

$ cat my-project/templates/admin/base_site.html
{% extends "admin:admin/base_site.html" %}

{% block title %}{{ title }} - My Project{% endblock %}

{% block branding %}
<h1 id="site-name">My Project</h1>
{% endblock %}

Note that in this version the block nav-global does not have to be present because of the inheritance.

Shorter version without namespace:

$ cat my-project/templates/admin/base_site.html
{% extends ":admin/base_site.html" %}

{% block title %}{{ title }} - My Project{% endblock %}

{% block branding %}
<h1 id="site-name">My Project</h1>
{% endblock %}

If we do not specify the application namespace, the first matching template will be used. This is useful when several applications provide the same templates but with different features.

Example of multiple empty namespaces:

$ cat my-project/application/templates/application/template.html
{% block content %}
<p>Application</p>
{% endblock content %}

$ cat my-project/application_extension/templates/application/template.html
{% extends ":application/template.html" %}
{% block content %}
{{ block.super }}
<p>Application extension</p>
{% endblock content %}

$ cat my-project/templates/application/template.html
{% extends ":application/template.html" %}
{% block content %}
{{ block.super }}
<p>Application project</p>
{% endblock content %}

Will render:

<p>Application</p>
<p>Application extension</p>
<p>Application project</p>

Installation

First of all install django-app-namespace-template-loader with your favorite package manager. Example :

$ pip install django-app-namespace-template-loader

Once installed, add app_namespace.Loader to the TEMPLATE_LOADERS setting of your project.

TEMPLATE_LOADERS = [
  'app_namespace.Loader',
  ... # Other template loaders
]

With Django >= 1.8 app_namespace.Loader should be added to the 'loaders' section in the OPTIONS dict of the DjangoTemplates backend instead.

TEMPLATES = [
    {
        'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',
        'OPTIONS': {
            'loaders': [
                'app_namespace.Loader',
                'django.template.loaders.filesystem.Loader',
                'django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader',
            ],
        },
    },
]

Note: With Django 1.8, app_namespace.Loader should be first in the list of loaders.

Known limitations

app_namespace.Loader can not work properly if you use it in conjunction with django.template.loaders.cached.Loader and inheritance based on empty namespaces.

Notes

Based originally on: http://djangosnippets.org/snippets/1376/

Requires: Django >= 1.8

Tested with Python 2.7, 3.3, 3.4.

If you want to use this application for previous versions of Django, use the version 0.3.1 of the package.

If you want to use this application with Python 2.6, use the version 0.2 of the package.