Why on earth do I have to pass RequestContext in all of my responses?

Question

I want to highlight the current page in the navigation menu. Obviously I need to give the menu links a class like \'active\' when you are on their page. This is a classic pr

Answer 1

Your intention makes sense, you'll need RequestContext most of the time and only rarely it can be safely omitted for performance reasons. The solution is simple, instead of render_to_response use direct_to_template shortcut:

from django.views.generic.simple import direct_to_template

def contact(request):
    # snip ...
    return direct_to_template(request, 'contact.html', { 'myvar' : myvar })

... or render_to decorator from django-annoying:

from annoying.decorators import render_to

@render_to('template.html')
def foo(request):          
    bar = Bar.object.all()  
    return {'bar': bar}     

Answer 2

For future reference, one can use django-tabs for doing what OP wanted.

Answer 3

You don't necessarily have to do anything to the markup of your navigation to give the current one a different style - there are declarative ways to do that using CSS.

See my answer here: Django: Is there a better way to bold the current page link for an example.