How do I use Django templates without the rest of Django?

Question

I want to use the Django template engine in my (Python) code, but I'm not building a Django-based web site. How do I use it without having a settings.py file (and others) and having to set the DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE environment variable?

If I run the following code:

>>> import django.template
>>> from django.template import Template, Context
>>> t = Template('My name is {{ my_name }}.')

I get:

ImportError: Settings cannot be imported, because environment variable DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE is undefined.

Answer 1

The solution is simple. It's actually well documented, but not too easy to find. (I had to dig around -- it didn't come up when I tried a few different Google searches.)

The following code works:

>>> from django.template import Template, Context
>>> from django.conf import settings
>>> settings.configure()
>>> t = Template('My name is {{ my_name }}.')
>>> c = Context({'my_name': 'Daryl Spitzer'})
>>> t.render(c)
u'My name is Daryl Spitzer.'

See the Django documentation (linked above) for a description of some of the settings you may want to define (as keyword arguments to configure).