Lazy django.template.loaders.filesystem.Loader - django

Question

I get this when trying to access an existing template:
Template-loader postmortem
Django tried loading these templates, in this order:
Using loader django.template.loaders.filesystem.Loader:
Using loader django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader:
/blah-blah/venv3.4/lib/python3.4/site-packages/django/contrib/admin/templates/polymer.html (File does not exist)
/blah-blah/venv3.4/lib/python3.4/site-packages/django/contrib/auth/templates/polymer.html (File does not exist)
This is a brand new project and, for lack of a better place, I have place my templates in the top dir:
├── manage.py
├── polymertest
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── settings.py
│   ├── urls.py
│   ├── views.py
│   └── wsgi.py
├── static
│   ├── bower_components
│   └── polymer
└── templates
└── polymer.html
I am able to solve the problem by adding os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'templates') to settings.TEMPLATES['DIRS']
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',
],
},
},
]
This does look suspicious to me, but according to the documentation, this is expected behavior: you need to configure DIRS. My question is then:
Where should I place my templates in a brand new Django project so that they are found by the filesystem.Loader without configuration? Or is this not possible at all?
This seems like a common use case to me: create a project, add a template, add a view and boom, serve it! I am surprised that it is not automatically covered.

Answer 1

For a settings file created with ./manage.py startproject, the APP_DIRS option is True. That means that when you create an app, any templates in that app's template directory will be found.
The DIRS option defaults to an empty list. That means that apart from app template directories, there are not any template directory that always work without configuration changes.
Setting 'DIRS': [os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'templates')], is a common approach, and it's suggested in the documentation.