Question

Using Google App Engines webapp framework, is there any way to pass data to a base template?
To be specific, I just want a logout button to be visible if the user is logged on (using googles own authentication system).

I’m still learning so I’m not sure what parts are GAE specific and what parts are django specific; having to send the logged in user from every single request handler seems very un-DRY.

Answer 1

Arguments to base templates are passed the same way as any other template arguments, by being passed to template.render. I usually solve this by having a convenience method on my base handler that inserts common template arguments, like this:

class BaseHandler(webapp.RequestHandler):
  def render_template(self, filename, template_args):
    path = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), 'templates', filename)
    template_args.update({
        'user': users.get_current_user(),
        # ...
    })

class MyHandler(BaseHandler):
  def get(self):
    self.render_template('my.html', {'foo': 'bar'})