Named replaces in strings with Mako

Question

Hello,

When creating a template in Mako, I would need to write things like : ${_('Hello, %(fname)s %(lname)s') % {'fname':'John','lname':'Doe'}}

I keep getting SyntaxException: (SyntaxError) unexpected EOF while parsing when writing that. Is there wny way to do the same ?

${_('Hello, %s %s') % ('John', 'Doe')} works, but it does not allow to change the order of the replacements when changing language, if needed.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Try the new Python string formatting:

>>> "{foo} {bar}".format(foo="foo", bar="bar")
'foo bar'
>>> "{foo} {bar}".format(**{"foo": "Hello", "bar": "World!"})
'Hello World!'

It looks nicer and is futureproof.

Answer 2

Using {} inside Mako's ${} is complicated; apparently Mako stops parsing the expression after finding the first }. A possible workaround is to use dict() instead of {}:

${_('Hello, %(fname)s %(lname)s') % dict(fname='John', lname='Doe')}