Django templates folders

Question

I'm experimenting with Django, and figuring out how to set urls.py, and how the URLs work. I've configured urls.py in the root of the project, to directs to my blog and admin. But now I want to add a page to my home, so at localhost:8000.

So I've added to following code to the urls.py in the root of the project:

from django.views.generic.simple import direct_to_template

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r"^$", direct_to_template, {"template": "base.html"}),
)

The problem is that it searches for the template in blog/templates/... Instead of the templates folder in my root. Which contains the base.html.

Full urls.py:

from django.conf.urls import patterns, include, url
from django.views.generic.simple import direct_to_template

# Uncomment the next two lines to enable the admin:
from django.contrib import admin
admin.autodiscover()


urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r"^$", direct_to_template, {"template": "base.html"}),
    url(r'^blog/', include('hellodjango.blog.urls')),
    url(r'^admin/doc/', include('django.contrib.admindocs.urls')),
    url(r'^admin/', include(admin.site.urls)),
    (r'^tinymce/', include('tinymce.urls')),
)

Am I overlooking something?

Answer 1

Did you set TEMPLATE_DIRS in your settings.py? Check and make sure it is set up correctly with absolute paths. This is how I make sure it is properly set:

settings.py

PROJECT_ROOT = os.path.abspath(os.path.dirname(__file__))

TEMPLATE_DIRS = (
    # Put strings here, like "/home/html/django_templates" or "C:/www/django/templates".
    # Always use forward slashes, even on Windows.
    # Don't forget to use absolute paths, not relative paths.
    os.path.join(PROJECT_ROOT, 'templates').replace('\\','/'),
)

# List of callables that know how to import templates from various sources.
TEMPLATE_LOADERS = (
    'django.template.loaders.filesystem.Loader',
    'django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader',
#     'django.template.loaders.eggs.Loader',
)

This way, I have a templates folder in my project root that is used for non-app templates and each app has a templates/appname folder inside the app itself.

If you want to use a template from the root template folder, you just give the name of the template like 'base.html' and if you want to use an app template, you use 'appname/base.html'

Folder structure:

project/
  appname/
    templates/ 
      appname/  <-- another folder with app name so 'appname/base.html' is from here
        base.html
    views.py
    ...

  templates/    <-- root template folder so 'base.html' is from here
    base.html

  settings.py
  views.py
  ...