Question

Intention

In my Django template, I create a link for each letter in the alphabet and each digit 1-9 to link to an index page.

In Python code, this is what it would look like:

for ch in map(chr, range(97, 123)) + range(1,10):
    print '<a href="/indexpage/{0}/">{0}</a>'.format(ch)

But I want to do this in a Django template, so I can’t use the map/range functions directly.

Failed Attempts

At first, I thought about creating a template tag that returns the alphanumeric character list, and then looping over it in the template, but this does not work, as it’s a tag and not a context variable.

Templatetag:

@register.simple_tag
def alnumrange():
    return map(chr, range(97, 123)) + range(1,10)

Template:

{% for ch in alnumrange %}
    <a href="/indexpage/{{ch}}/">{{ch}}</a>
{% endfor %}

I thought it might work when using the with tag, but it didn’t either.

Further thoughts

• I can’t set the context in a view as this is a base template which I extend.
• I don’t want to add a context processor, as I use this range only in a single template.

Is there a way to turn the template tag output into a context variable over which I can iterate? Or is there another way I should solve this?

Answer 1

You need inclusion tag here. Just pass your range in context and render it as you like. It gives you flexible and modular structure.