Django view - load template from calling app's dir first

Question

I try to keep a somewhat consistent naming scheme on my HTML templates. I.e. index.html for main, delete.html for delete page and so forth. But the app_directories loader always seems to load the template from the app that's first alphabetically.

Is there any way to always check for a match in the calling app's templates directory first?

Relevant settings in my settings.py:

PROJECT_PATH = os.path.realpath(os.path.dirname(__file__))

TEMPLATE_LOADERS = (
    'django.template.loaders.app_directories.load_template_source',
    'django.template.loaders.filesystem.load_template_source',
)
TEMPLATE_DIRS = (
    os.path.join(PROJECT_PATH, 'templates'),
)

I've tried changing the order of TEMPLATE_LOADERS, without success.

---

Edit as requested by Ashok:

Dir structure of each app:

templates/
    index.html
    add.html
    delete.html
    create.html
models.py
test.py
admin.py
views.py

In each app's views.py:

def index(request):
    # code...
    return render_to_response('index.html', locals())

def add(request):
    # code...
    return render_to_response('add.html', locals())

def delete(request):
    # code...
    return render_to_response('delete.html', locals())

def update(request):
    # code...
    return render_to_response('update.html', locals())

Answer 1

The reason for this is that the app_directories loader is essentially the same as adding each app's template folder to the TEMPLATE_DIRS setting, e.g. like

TEMPLATE_DIRS = (
    os.path.join(PROJECT_PATH, 'app1', 'templates'),
    os.path.join(PROJECT_PATH, 'app2', 'template'),
    ...
    os.path.join(PROJECT_PATH, 'templates'),
)

The problem with this is that as you mentioned, the index.html will always be found in app1/templates/index.html instead of any other app. There is no easy solution to magically fix this behavior without modifying the app_directories loader and using introspection or passing along app information, which gets a bit complicated. An easier solution:

• Keep your settings.py as-is
• Add a subdirectory in each app's templates folder with the name of the app
• Use the templates in views like 'app1/index.html' or 'app2/index.html'

For a more concrete example:

project
    app1
        templates
            app1
                index.html
                add.html
                ...
        models.py
        views.py
        ...
    app2
        ...

Then in the views:

def index(request):
    return render_to_response('app1/index.html', locals())

You could even write a wrapper to automate prepending the app name to all your views, and even that could be extended to use introspection, e.g.:

def render(template, data=None):
    return render_to_response(__name__.split(".")[-2] + '/' + template, data)

def index(request):
    return render('index.html', locals())

The __name__.split(".")[-2] assumes the file is within a package, so it will turn e.g. 'app1.views' into 'app1' to prepend to the template name. This also assumes a user will never rename your app without also renaming the folder in the templates directory, which may not be a safe assumption to make and in that case just hard-code the name of the folder in the templates directory.

Answer 2

The app_loader looks for templates within your applications in order that they are specified in your INSTALLED_APPS. (http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/templates/api/#loader-types).

My suggestion is to preface the name of your template file with the app name to avoid these naming conflicts.

For example, the template dir for app1 would look like:

templates/
    app1_index.html
    app1_delete.html
    app1_add.html
    app1_create.html