django - getting the requested user object in the template through models method - django

Question

Please have a look at this code:
models:
class Activity(models.Model):
actor = models.ForeignKey(User)
action = models.CharField(max_length=100)
content_type = models.ForeignKey(ContentType)
object_id = models.PositiveIntegerField()
content_object = generic.GenericForeignKey('content_type', 'object_id')
pub_date = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True, auto_now=False)
class Meta:
verbose_name = 'Activity'
verbose_name_plural = 'Activities'
ordering = ['-pub_date']
def __unicode__(self):
return ("%s %s") % (self.actor.username, self.action)
def get_rendered_html(self):
template_name = '%s_activity.html' %(self.content_type.name)
return render_to_string(template_name, {
'object':self.content_object,
'actor':self.actor,
'action':self.action,
})
template:
<div class="user_activity">
<p>{{ actor.username }} {{ action }} {{ object.content_object.user.username }} status</p>
<p>{{ object.content_object.body }}</p>
<p>{{ object.content_object.pub_date }}</p>
{% if object.content_object.image %}
<div class="activity_img_wrapper">
<p><img src="/media/{{ object.content_object.image }}"/></p>
</div>
{% endif %}
</div>
Question
How do I get the requested user's username for the above template (request.user). I did like this, but it didn't help :
<div class="user_activity">
<p>
{% if user.username == actor.username %}
You
{% else %}
{{ actor.username }}
{% endif %}
{{ action }}
{% if user.username == object.content_object.user.username %}
Your
{% else %}
{{ object.content_object.user.username }}
{% endif %}
status
</p>
<p>{{ object.content_object.body }}</p>
<p>{{ object.content_object.pub_date }}</p>
{% if object.content_object.image %}
<div class="activity_img_wrapper">
<p><img src="/media/{{ object.content_object.image }}"/></p>
</div>
{% endif %}
</div>
Please help me how to do it. I would really be grateful for your help. Thank you.

Answer 1

There is no RequestContext object available in the get_rendered_html() method so you can't pass it as a context_instance argument of the render_to_string(). This is why the user variable is not available in the template.
You should pass the User instance to get_rendered_html() method and propagate it to the template:
def get_rendered_html(self, user=None):
template_name = '%s_activity.html' %(self.content_type.name)
return render_to_string(template_name, {
'object':self.content_object,
'actor':self.actor,
'action':self.action,
'user':user,
})
If you want to call this method from other template then the best option is to use custom template tag:
# app/templatetags/activity_tags.py
# and don't forget to create empty app/templatetags/__init__.py :-)
from django import template
from django.utils.safestring import mark_safe
register = template.Library()
#register.simple_tag(takes_context=True)
def render_activity(context, activity):
user = context['user']
html = activity.get_rendered_html(user)
return mark_safe(html)
And then load and use this tag library in your template:
{% load activity_tags %}
...
{% render_activity activity %}