Check if a template exists within a Django template

django templates try-catch exists
pq. picture pq. · Jun 2, 2011 · Viewed 7.6k times · Source

Is there an out-of-the-box way of checking if a template exists before including it in a Django template? Alternatives are welcome too but some of them would not work due to the particular circumstances.

For example, here's an answer to a slightly different question. This is not what I'm looking for: How to check if a template exists in Django?

Answer

Chris Pratt picture Chris Pratt · Jun 2, 2011

Assuming include doesn't blow up if you pass it a bad template reference, that's probably the best way to go. Your other alternative would be to create a template tag that essentially does the checks in the link you mentioned.

Very basic implementation:

from django import template

register = template.Library()

@register.simple_tag
def template_exists(template_name):
    try:
        django.template.loader.get_template(template_name)
        return "Template exists"
    except template.TemplateDoesNotExist:
        return "Template doesn't exist"

In your template:

{% template_exists 'someapp/sometemplate.html' %}

That tag isn't really all that useful, so you'd probably want to create one that actually adds a variable to the context, which you could then check in an if statement or what not.

Related questions

Django template how to look up a dictionary value with a variable

mydict = {"key1":"value1", "key2":"value2"} The regular way to lookup a dictionary value in a Django template is {{ mydict.key1 }}, {{ mydict.key2 }}. What if the key is a loop variable? ie: {% for item in list %} # where item has an attribute …

Read More
Django {% with %} tags within {% if %} {% else %} tags?

So I want to do something like follows: {% if age > 18 %} {% with patient as p %} {% else %} {% with patient.parent as p %} ... {% endwith %} {% endif %} But Django is telling me that I need another {% endwith %} tag. Is there any way to rearrange …

Read More
Django -- Template tag in {% if %} block

I have the following dictionary passed to a render function, with sources being a list of strings and title being a string potentially equal to one of the strings in sources: {'title':title, 'sources':sources}) In the HTML template I'd …

Read More