Question

While setting up my project and working to keep apps non-dependent, I’ve hit a snag. I’d like all of the templates from the different apps to have a consistent header and footer. Here’s what I’m trying:

myproject/
         base/
             templates/
                      header.html
                      footer.html
         app1/
             templates/
                      my_app1_page.html -> want to include 'header.html'
                                           and 'footer.html' from base app

Pretend there are many more apps that want to do this as well. Is this possible and/or the right way to do it?

Answer 1

As long as the apps are in INSTALLED_APPS and the template loader for apps dirs is enabled, you can include any template from another app, i.e.:

{% include "header.html" %}

… since your templates are located directly in the templates dir of your app.
Generally, in order to avoid name clashes it is better to use:

app1/
    templates/
        app1/
            page1.html
            page2.html
app2/
    templates/
        app2/
            page1.html
            page2.html

And {% include "app1/page1.html" %} or {% include "app2/page1.html" %} …

But: for keeping a consistent look and feel, it is so much better to use template inheritance rather than inclusion. Template inheritance is one of the really good things of the Django template system, choose inheritance over inclusion whenever it makes sense (most of the time).

My recommendations:

• Have a base template for your project (“base.html” is the default convention) with header and footer and a {%block content%} for your main content.
• Have your other templates inherit form base.html {% extends "base.html" %} and override the content section

See another response to this question for links to the doc