Django: Configure template rendering

How to configure Django to connect to our templates directory

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

What are templates?

Django templates are text files, which can be composed to run as HTML files — which can later be referred to as HTML templates, once templating has been configured in Django.

So, let’s get started

…

Step 1:

Make sure that you create a templates folder in your root/base directory, like so:

# - Base/Root directory 
MyProject
---> MyProject(contains settings.py)
---> MyApp
---> static
---> templates
---> venv
---> db.sqlite3
---> manage.py

Step 2:

Import the os module at the top of your settings.py file:

# settings.py
import os

Step 3:

With the os module, you need to tell Django where to look for our templates. This needs to be configured in DIRS, under our template configuration settings:

# settings.py
TEMPLATES = [
 {
  'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',     
  
  'DIRS': [os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'templates')], # - Configure DIRS     
  
  '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',
            ],
        },
    },
]

A final note…

For those that are interested in learning Django from scratch, feel free to check out my latest course:

Python Django: Ultimate Beginners Course — 2022

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Originally published at https://www.cloudwithdjango on August 7, 2022.