Django: Is there a way to set global views? For example enable data for a sidebar through all URLS

Question

Hello

I am building a Django application that is a pretty basic blog, so far it has been wonderful. I got comments, tags etc up. But one thing is bugging me: I cant get the sidebar i want to work. I use the django.views.generic.date_based generic view and this is my urls.py for the blog:

    urlpatterns = patterns('django.views.generic.date_based',
        (r'(?P<year>\d{4})/(?P<month>[a-z]{3})/(?P<day>\w{1,2})/(?P<slug>[-\w]+)/$', 'object_detail',dict(info_dict, slug_field='slug',template_name='blog/detail.html')),

 (r'^(?P<year>\d{4})/(?P<month>[a-z]{3})/(?P<day>w{1,2})/(?P<slug>[-\w]+)/$', 'object_detail', dict(info_dict, template_name='blog/list.html')),

 (r'^(?P<year>\d{4})/(?P<month>[a-z]{3})/(?P<day>w{1,2})/$','archive_day',dict(info_dict,template_name='blog/list.html')),

 (r'^(?P<year>\d{4})/(?P<month>[a-z]{3})/$','archive_month', dict(info_dict, template_name='blog/list.html')),

 (r'^(?P<year>\d{4})/$','archive_year', dict(info_dict, template_name='blog/list.html')),

 (r'^$','archive_index', dict(info_dict, template_name='blog/list.html')),

)

When i use the URL with 'archive_index' passed i can easily print the latest entries for my sidebar, but when i enter a post i will use one of the top ones where only "object_detail" is availabe. This makes my sidebar entries dissapear. What is the best solution to this problem? Is there a way to make some objects available globally? Through views or otherwise.

Answer 1

People do things like that with template tags. The documentation for custom template tags might be helpful, and there's also a great little tutorial here.

Alternatively, you can use context processors - but that adds an overhead to every single request, which may not be necessary.