Can I access constants in settings.py from templat

Question

I have some stuff in settings.py that I'd like to be able to access from a template, but I can't figure out how to do it. I already tried

{{CONSTANT_NAME}}

but that doesn't seem to work. Is this possible?

Answer 1

If we were to compare context vs. template tags on a single variable, then knowing the more efficient option could be benificial. However, you might be better off to dip into the settings only from templates that need that variable. In that case it doesn't make sense to pass the variable into all templates. But if you are sending the variable into a common template such as the base.html template, Then it would not matter as the base.html template is rendered on every request, so you can use either methods.

If you decide to go with the template tags option, then use the following code as it allows you to pass a default value in, just in case the variable in-question was undefined.

Example: get_from_settings my_variable as my_context_value

Example: get_from_settings my_variable my_default as my_context_value

class SettingsAttrNode(Node):
    def __init__(self, variable, default, as_value):
        self.variable = getattr(settings, variable, default)
        self.cxtname = as_value

    def render(self, context):
        context[self.cxtname] = self.variable
        return ''


def get_from_setting(parser, token):
    as_value = variable = default = ''
    bits = token.contents.split()
    if len(bits) == 4 and bits[2] == 'as':
        variable = bits[1]
        as_value = bits[3]
    elif len(bits) == 5 and bits[3] == 'as':
        variable     = bits[1]
        default  = bits[2]
        as_value = bits[4]
    else:
        raise TemplateSyntaxError, "usage: get_from_settings variable default as value " \
                "OR: get_from_settings variable as value"

    return SettingsAttrNode(variable=variable, default=default, as_value=as_value)

get_from_setting = register.tag(get_from_setting)

Answer 2

If it's a value you'd like to have for every request & template, using a context processor is more appropriate.

Here's how:

1. Make a context_processors.py file in your app directory. Let's say I want to have the ADMIN_PREFIX_VALUE value in every context:

   from django.conf import settings # import the settings file
   
   def admin_media(request):
       # return the value you want as a dictionnary. you may add multiple values in there.
       return {'ADMIN_MEDIA_URL': settings.ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX}
   

2. add your context processor to your settings.py file:

   TEMPLATES = [{
       # whatever comes before
       'OPTIONS': {
           'context_processors': [
               # whatever comes before
               "your_app.context_processors.admin_media",
           ],
       }
   }]
   

3. Use RequestContext in your view to add your context processors in your template. The render shortcut does this automatically:

   from django.shortcuts import render
   
   def my_view(request):
       return render(request, "index.html")
   

4. and finally, in your template:

   ...
   <a href="{{ ADMIN_MEDIA_URL }}">path to admin media</a>
   ...
   

Answer 3

Both IanSR and bchhun suggested overriding TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS in the settings. Be aware that this setting has a default that can cause some screwy things if you override it without re-setting the defaults. The defaults have also changed in recent versions of Django.

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.3/ref/settings/#template-context-processors

The default TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS :

TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS = ("django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth",
"django.core.context_processors.debug",
"django.core.context_processors.i18n",
"django.core.context_processors.media",
"django.core.context_processors.static",
"django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages")

Answer 4

I like Berislav's solution, because on simple sites, it is clean and effective. What I do NOT like is exposing all the settings constants willy-nilly. So what I ended up doing was this:

from django import template
from django.conf import settings

register = template.Library()

ALLOWABLE_VALUES = ("CONSTANT_NAME_1", "CONSTANT_NAME_2",)

# settings value
@register.simple_tag
def settings_value(name):
    if name in ALLOWABLE_VALUES:
        return getattr(settings, name, '')
    return ''

Usage:

{% settings_value "CONSTANT_NAME_1" %}

This protects any constants that you have not named from use in the template, and if you wanted to get really fancy, you could set a tuple in the settings, and create more than one template tag for different pages, apps or areas, and simply combine a local tuple with the settings tuple as needed, then do the list comprehension to see if the value is acceptable.
I agree, on a complex site, this is a bit simplistic, but there are values that would be nice to have universally in templates, and this seems to work nicely. Thanks to Berislav for the original idea!

Answer 5

If someone finds this question like I did, then I'll post my solution which works on Django 2.0:

This tag assigns some settings.py variable value to template's variable:

Usage: {% get_settings_value template_var "SETTINGS_VAR" %}

app/templatetags/my_custom_tags.py:

from django import template
from django.conf import settings

register = template.Library()

class AssignNode(template.Node):
    def __init__(self, name, value):
        self.name = name
        self.value = value

    def render(self, context):
        context[self.name] = getattr(settings, self.value.resolve(context, True), "")
        return ''

@register.tag('get_settings_value')
def do_assign(parser, token):
    bits = token.split_contents()
    if len(bits) != 3:
        raise template.TemplateSyntaxError("'%s' tag takes two arguments" % bits[0])
    value = parser.compile_filter(bits[2])
    return AssignNode(bits[1], value)

Your template:

{% load my_custom_tags %}

# Set local template variable:
{% get_settings_value settings_debug "DEBUG" %}

# Output settings_debug variable:
{{ settings_debug }}

# Use variable in if statement:
{% if settings_debug == True %}
... do something ...
{% else %}
... do other stuff ...
{% endif %}

See Django's documentation how to create custom template tags here: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.0/howto/custom-template-tags/

Answer 6

The example above from bchhun is nice except that you need to explicitly build your context dictionary from settings.py. Below is an UNTESTED example of how you could auto-build the context dictionary from all upper-case attributes of settings.py (re: "^[A-Z0-9_]+$").

At the end of settings.py:

_context = {} 
local_context = locals()
for (k,v) in local_context.items():
    if re.search('^[A-Z0-9_]+$',k):
        _context[k] = str(v)

def settings_context(context):
    return _context

TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS = (
...
'myproject.settings.settings_context',
...
)