Rendering Mako Templates (vanilla Django)¶

The following shows how to use DMP to render Mako templates only – without any of DMP’s other features. It uses DMP as a normal template engine within a vanilla Django project.

Install Django, Mako, and DMP¶

DMP works with Django 1.9+, including the 2.0 releases.

The following will install all three dependencies:

pip3 install --upgrade django-mako-plus

pip install --upgrade django-mako-plus

Create a Vanilla Django Project¶

Create a vanilla Django project. You may want to follow the standard Django Tutorial to create a mysite project. Follow the tutorial through the section creating templates.
Create a basic view function in polls/views.py:

from django.shortcuts import render
from datetime import datetime

def index(request):
    context = {
        'now': datetime.now(),
    }
    return render(request, 'polls/index.html', context)

Create a template in polls/templates/polls/index.html:

<html>
<body>
    The current time is {{ now|date:'c' }}
</body>
</html>

Add a path in mysite/urls.py:

from django.urls import url
from polls import views

urlpatterns = [
    url('', views.index, name='index'),
]

Add to INSTALLED_APPS:

In settings.py, be sure you’ve added polls to your installed apps.

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    'polls',
]

Run the project and go to http://localhost:8000/. Note that everything above is a normal Django project – DMP isn’t in play yet.

Enable the DMP Template Engine¶

Add DMP to your installed apps in settings.py.

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    'django_mako_plus',
    'polls',
]

Add the DMP template engine in settings.py. You’ve already got a TEMPLATES list in settings, so replace or modify it with the following:

TEMPLATES = [
    {
        'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',
        'DIRS': [],
        'APP_DIRS': True,
        'OPTIONS': {
            'context_processors': [
                'django.template.context_processors.debug',
                'django.template.context_processors.request',
                'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
                'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',
            ],
        },
    },
    {
        'NAME': 'django_mako_plus',
        'BACKEND': 'django_mako_plus.MakoTemplates',
    },
]

Note that we won’t be using DMP to render templates. But as a Django template engine, DMP initializes by being listed in TEMPLATES. We’ve listed DMP after the Django template renderer so Django can match and render templates first.

Enable a logger in settings.py to see DMP routing information and other messages:

LOGGING = {
    'version': 1,
    'disable_existing_loggers': True,
    'loggers': {
        'django_mako_plus': {
            'handlers': ['console_handler'],
            'level': DEBUG and 'DEBUG' or 'WARNING',
            'propagate': False,
        },
        'django': {
            'handlers': ['console_handler'],
            'level': 'INFO',
            'propagate': False,
        },
    },
    'handlers': {
        'console_handler': {
            'level': 'DEBUG',
            'class': 'logging.StreamHandler',
        },
    },
}

Create a View with Mako Syntax¶

Let’s create a new endpoint that uses the Mako engine. We’ll leave the index endpoint as a Django template.

Add another endpoint to polls/views.py:

from django.shortcuts import render
from datetime import datetime

def index(request):
    context = {
        'now': datetime.now(),
    }
    return render(request, 'polls/index.html', context)


def another(request):
    context = {
        'now': datetime.now(),
    }
    return render(request, 'polls/another.html', context)

Create a Mako-syntax template in polls/templates/another.html:

<html>
<body>
    The current time is ${ now.strftime('%c') }
</body>
</html>

Note that your two templates are in different folders: another.html is in the main templates directory, while index.html is in the polls subdirectory. This difference is a result of the differing algorithms that Django and DMP use to find templates. When we render polls/another.html, we’re explicitly telling DMP to 1) go to the polls app and 2) load the another.html template.

mysite/
    polls/
        ...
        views.py
        templates/
            another.html
            polls/
                index.html

Double-check your project to ensure the template files exist in the locations shows above.

Add a path in mysite/mysite/urls.py, and register polls as a DMP app:

from django.apps import apps
from django.urls import path
from polls import views

# note this is Django 2.x syntax
urlpatterns = [
    path('', views.index, name='index'),
    path('another', views.another, name='another'),
]

# manually register the polls app with DMP
apps.get_app_config('django_mako_plus').register_app('polls')

Since DMP routes by convention, it could potentially “take over” template rendering–pushing out the normal Django router. In a vanilla Django project, this is probably not what you want to happen. Therefore, apps must be explicitly registered (as above) so DMP knows its app limits.

Run the project and go to http://localhost:8000/polls/another.

Congratulations. You’ve got a standard Django project that can render Mako syntax.