Whats the correct structure for Django templates? - django

Question

I have a project in Django called: "my_site", and an app called "blog", I'm trying to render the "index.html" inside the path: my_site/blog/templates/blog/index.html. But keep getting this error:
Template-loader postmortem
Django tried loadi
ng these templates, in this order:
Using engine django:
django.template.loaders.filesystem.Loader: C:\Users\Ricardo Neto\Dev\Django_Projects\my_site\templates\index.html (Source does not exist)
django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader: C:\Python310\lib\site-packages\django\contrib\admin\templates\index.html (Source does not exist)
django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader: C:\Python310\lib\site-packages\django\contrib\auth\templates\index.html (Source does not exist)
django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader: C:\Users\Ricardo Neto\Dev\Django_Projects\my_site\blog\templates\index.html (Source does not exist)
The view:
def index(request):
return render(request, 'index.html')
the urls.py:
urlpatterns = [
path('', views.index),
path('posts', views.show_all_posts),
path('posts/<slug:slug>', views.show_post)
]
If i move the index.html outside the blog folder, like in this example: my_site/blog/templates/index.html
the code runs and the index.html renders without problem, but i was taught that the correct structure is to create a folder inside templates with the same name of the app.
So could anyone please explain me the way i should structure my files?

Answer 1

rather than keeping it within the app. I prefer to keep it under the project file. my_site/templates/app_x/index.html
├───accounts
│
├───django_project
│
└───templates
├───accounts
└───registration
In settings.py file update the DIRS to the path of the templates folder. Generally, the templates folder is created and kept in the sample directory where manage.py.
import os
TEMPLATES = [
{
'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',
'DIRS': [os.path.join(BASE_DIR,'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',
],
},
},
]
If I open separate files under templates, I render them as folder_name/index.html, otherwise directly as index.html.

Answer 2

Django resolves templates relative to the "templates" directory located inside the app directory and chooses the first template across all apps whose name matches. For example, if you have two apps: blog and news both with templates named "index.html" in the "templates" directory, Django would not be able to choose correctly one of them. To make a distinction you can create a subfolder inside the "templates" directory named after the corresponding application: "blog/templates/blog/index.html" and "news/templates/news/index.html". And after that you can use those templates in the view functions like this: render(request, 'news/index.html') and render(request, 'blog/index.html').
You can read about this topic here, check the remark "Template namespacing": https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.0/intro/tutorial03/