How to get current_app for using with reverse in multi-deployable reusable Django application?

Question

I'm writing reusable app. And I want to deploy it several times.

Here is urls.py:

urlpatterns = patterns('',
(r'^carphotos/', include('webui.photos.urls', app_name='car-photos') ),
(r'^userphotos/', include('webui.photos.urls',  app_name='profile-photos') ),)

and photos/urls.py:

urlpatterns = patterns('webui.photos.views',
url(r'^$', album_list, name="album-list" )
url(r'^newalbum/$', album_page, {'create': True}, name="album-create"),)

On the album_list view I want to show url for creating new album album_page.

I found that I have to use parameter current_app of reverse function to get proper URL.

But how to get this current_app? I thought the answer is something simple. But I can't find it in django documentation.

Thanks, Nick

Answer 1

I believe that's what the sites framework is for.

Answer 2

In your urls, you have a different app_name even though it's the same app. Set the app_name to the same thing, and set namespace uniquely for each instance. eg.

urlpatterns = patterns('',
(r'^carphotos/', include('webui.photos.urls', app_name="webui_photos", namespace='car-photos') ),
(r'^userphotos/', include('webui.photos.urls', app_name="webui_photos", namespace='profile-photos') ),)

Then provide the current_app argument when using reverse. See http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/http/urls/#reverse and http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/http/urls/#url-namespaces

[edit] after re-reading your question:

you don't need to provide the current_app argument if you are using the {% url %} tag. As far as I'm lead to believe, it will automatically access a template variable called current_app, which is automatically set based on the matched url.

Answer 3

After exploring this topic for several days, I found that it isn't natural to mount django app more than once.

There is implementation of pluggable applications pattern: http://github.com/nowells/django-pluggables. It looks too tricky for me.

So I decided to move repeated functionality to custom tags and duplicate templates for each usage of my app. I hope using custom tags and extend feature help me to follow DRY principle.