so I was wondering if you could return an inclusion tag directly from a view.
The page is a normal page with a list of items. The list of items is rendered using an inclusion tag. If an ajax request is made to the view, I want to return only what the inclusion tag would return so I can append it onto the page via javascript. Is something like this possible? Or should I architect this better?
This is certainly possible. A view can render any template that an inclusion tag can. The advantage of this approach is that you can leverage the full strength of Django's templates.
On the other hand AJAX responses typically do not contain HTML so much as XML/JSON. If you are using Django's template features you are better off with returning HTML. If not, XML/JSON might make more sense. Just my two cents.
quick and dirty way could be to have a view, that renders a template, that only contains your templatetag.