CODEWITHSUNDEEP
djangodjango-templates
eselk
eselk

Reputation: 6884

How are Django page templates assigned to each page?

I couldn't find this info in the Django docs, but I'm sure it is there, I'm just very new and don't know what terms/etc to search on.

How are Django page templates assigned to each page?

I have a login to a Django site, and also SFTP access to the site. I don't think my Django login is a superuser/full-admin though because the interface seems pretty limited compared to other CMS systems. I can edit pages, posts and the media library, but I don't see anything that says how each page is assigned a template.

For example, I have this file /mysite/templates/pages/index.html

I know that template is being used for the home page because it has all of the content that is specific to the home page on it, and changes I make show up on the home page.

I tried copying that file to test.html, but when I browse to test.html in my browser, I get a 404 error (I also get that error if I go to index.html). So there must be something else that maps a template to a page, but I'll be dambed if I can find it. Will I need more access to the admin area, or can I do something with SFTP? I also have SSH access but wasn't able to follow any of the steps online to create a new superuser account for me, for Django.

Edit: Thanks for both answers, after I work through this I'll accept whichever helped the most. I do not have a views.py file, but I think it might be using an extra module for this routing, I have this in my urls.py file:

urlpatterns = patterns("",
    ("^admin/", include(admin.site.urls)),
    url("^$", "mezzanine.pages.views.page", {"slug": "/"}, name="home"),
    ("^", include("mezzanine.urls")),
)

Is this "mezzanine" something different which changes the answer (location of views.py or list of views)?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 203

Answers (2)

Paulo Bu
Paulo Bu

Reputation: 29804

Django uses urls.py files to map paths to views. This match is resolved using regular expressions. When a match is found, Django executes the associated view (usually inside views.py). The view is in charge to render the template required for the path (by finding it on the server's hard disk and loading it).

All aforementioned means that there's no direct association between a url path (i.e www.example.com/path/to/page) and a file on the server's hard disk (i.e /server/path/to/page). It's all performed dynamically by Django's engine when a request comes in.

If you want to know which view is gonna be generated for a specific path, follow the regexs at urls.py until you find the path you're looking for. Then open the view for that url and see inside which template it is rendering.

Reading doc's URL Dispatcher is a good point to start learning about this.

Hope this helps!

Upvotes: 1

deelaws
deelaws

Reputation: 134

url.py is the file that maps the urls to methods that return rendered templates. In essence you define the url and a method and when someone goes to that url, that method gets called which returns a HTTP response with the rendered template. This map is called urlpatterns. In the following example when someone goes to yourwebsite/blog then in the blog apps, view.py, page method is called, which will use a template and render that with specific information.

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    url(r'^blog/$', 'blog.views.page'),
    url(r'^blog/page(?P<num>\d+)/$', 'blog.views.page'),
)

Have a look at this link. https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/http/urls/

Upvotes: 1

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