Question

I want to have some constants in a Django Projects. For example, let’s say a constant called MIN_TIME_TEST.

I would like to be able to access this constant in two places: from within my Python code, and from within any Templates.

What’s the best way to go about doing this?

EDIT:
To clarify, I know about Template Context Processors and about just putting things in settings.py or some other file and just importing.

My question is, how do I combine the two approaches without violating the “Don’t Repeat Yourself” rule? Based on the answers so far, here’s my approach:

I’d like to create a file called global_constants.py, which will have a list of constants (things like MIN_TIME_TEST = 5). I can import this file into any module to get the constants.

But now, I want to create the context processor which returns all of these constants. How can I go about doing this automatically, without having to list them again in a dictionary, like in John Mee’s answer?

Answer 1

Both Luper and Vladimir are correct imho but you’ll need both in order to complete your requirements.

• Although, the constants don’t need to be in the settings.py, you could put them anywhere and import them from that place into your view/model/module code. I sometimes put them into the __init__.py if I don’t care to have them to be considered globally relevant.

• a context processor like this will ensure that selected variables are globally in the template scope

  def settings(request):
      """
      Put selected settings variables into the default template context
      """
      from django.conf import settings
      return {
          'DOMAIN':     settings.DOMAIN,
          'GOOGLEMAPS_API_KEY': settings.GOOGLEMAPS_API_KEY,
      }
  

But this might be overkill if you’re new to django; perhaps you’re just asking how to put variables into the template scope…?

from django.conf import settings

...
# do stuff with settings.MIN_TIME_TEST as you wish

render_to_response("the_template.html", { 
    "MIN_TIME_TEST": settings.MIN_TIME_TEST 
}, context_instance=RequestContext(request)