creating my own context processor in django

Question

I have come to a point where I need to pass certain variables to all of my views (mostly custom authentication type variables).

I was told writing my own context pro

Answer 1

The context processor you have written should work. The problem is in your view.

Are you positive that your view is being rendered with RequestContext?

For example:

def test_view(request):
    return render_to_response('template.html')

The view above will not use the context processors listed in TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS. Make sure you are supplying a RequestContext like so:

def test_view(request):
    return render_to_response('template.html', context_instance=RequestContext(request))

Answer 2

According to the django docs you can use render as a shortcut instead of render_to_response with the context_instance argument:

Alternatively, use the render() shortcut which is the same as a call to render_to_response() with a context_instance argument that forces the use of a RequestContext.

Answer 3

Since Django 1.8 you register your custom context processors like this:

TEMPLATES = [
    {
        'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',
        'DIRS': [
            'templates'
        ],
        'APP_DIRS': True,
        'OPTIONS': {
            'context_processors': [
                'django.template.context_processors.debug',
                'django.template.context_processors.request',
                'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
                'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',
                'www.context_processors.instance',
            ],
        },
    },
]

assuming your context processor is in app www in context_processors.py

Answer 4

If you’re using Django’s render_to_response() shortcut to populate a template with the contents of a dictionary, your template will be passed a Context instance by default (not a RequestContext). To use a RequestContext in your template rendering, use the render() shortcut which is the same as a call to render_to_response() with a context_instance argument that forces the use of a RequestContext.