Question

i am newbie to django and learning by doing small application.
in views.py i have intentionally included a template file(.html) which does not exist.

t = get_template('current_datetimeP.html')

in setting.py
TEMPLATE_DIRS = (
“D:/Django_Code/mysite/templates/”,
)

i get this error TemplateDoesNotExist at /time/

Django tried loading these templates, in this order:
Using loader django.template.loaders.filesystem.Loader:
D:\Django_Code\mysite\templates\current_datetimeP.html (File does not exist)

since i have included D:\Django_Code\mysite\templates\ in settings.py its fine that the Django is loking in there but what about following

I also get this

Using loader django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader:
C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\django\contrib\auth\templates\current_datetimeP.html (File does not exist)

Why Django looking in here *C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\django\contrib\auth\templates*.
Is it a default location to search templates ?

one more thing , its is evident that Django is looking in above directory. can we place templates file in there instead of putting in application directory. (Although it is not a good practice ) ?

Answer 1

Template loading is controlled by the TEMPLATE_LOADERS setting in settings.py, which usually looks something like this:

TEMPLATE_LOADERS = (
    'django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader',
    'django.template.loaders.filesystem.Loader',
)

The app directories loader looks for templates in a “templates” folder in any of the apps listed in INSTALLED_APPS in settings.

The filesystem loader attempts to load templates from the fully qualified directory path names listed under TEMPLATE_DIRS in the settings file.

If you wish to give the filesystem loader preference, let it come before the app directories loader in the TEMPLATE_LOADERS setting. If you’d like to turn off app directories loading, comment it out with a # ( or delete it from the tuple ).