Question

I am defining a function in my context_processor to pass a value from my settings to use in templates. So what is the right way, and more importantly what is the difference?

def baseurl(request):
    return {'BASE_URL': settings.BASE_URL}

or

def baseurl(context):
    return {'BASE_URL': settings.BASE_URL}

I have always used the first, but have run into a few examples of the second

Answer 1

You are free to call this argument whatever you like but request is the most common or clear. From the Django docs: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.4/ref/templates/api/#writing-your-own-context-processors

A context processor has a very simple interface: It’s just a Python function that takes one argument, an HttpRequest object, and returns a dictionary that gets added to the template context.

While there is nothing stopping you from naming this argument context it would be misleading since it is passed an HttpRequest object.