How do I access unrelated models within a Django template? - django

Question

I want to use an app to create a menu that is easy to edit with the admin interface. Something like this:
class Menu_item
name = models.CharField()
item_url = models.URLField()
My template looks something like this:
{% extends base.html %}
div ID="nav"
{{ foo.navbar.? }}
/div
div ID="Content"
{% block content %}{% endblock %}
/div
I want div#nav to contain a ul based upon the above model but just can't figure out how to accomplish this. It seems like an object_list generic view would be great but, the URL accesses the view for the model that populates div#content. Does anyone have any suggestions? Is there a way to access a generic view without a URL?
Thank you.

Answer 1

I have discovered a solution. Inclusion Tags.
What I did was create an inclusion tag, which amounts to a simple custom template tag (django provides a shortcut for you!).
Here is what I did:
Ignore views.py - It will not be used in this case
Create a sub-directory in the app's dir called "templatetags" containing init.py and get_navbar.py (or whatever you want your tag to be):
mysite/
navbar/
templatetags/
__ init__.py (without the space befire init)
get_navbar.py
I changed my navbar.models to look like this:
from django.db import models
class Menu_choice(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=30)
def __unicode__(self):
return self.name
class Menu_item(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=20)
navbar = models.ForeignKey(Menu_choice)
item_url = models.CharField(max_length=200)
item_desc = models.CharField(max_length=30)
def __unicode__(self):
return self.name
This allows me to create a Menu_choice object in the admin interface for each layer of navigation (primary, secondary, etc)
get_navbar.py looks like this:
from navbar.models import Menu_choice, Menu_item
from django import template
register = template.Library()
#register.inclusion_tag('navbar/navbar.html')
def get_navbar(navBar):
navbar = Menu_item.objects.filter(navbar__name=navBar)
return { "navbar": navbar }
(Note navBar as opposed to navbar)
Create the navbar.html template:
<ul>
{% for menu_item in navbar %}
<li><a href="{{ menu_item.item_url }}">{{ menu_item.name }}&lt/a>&lt/li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>
Finally, I inserted the following into my base.html:
{% load get_navbar %}
And where I want primary navigation:
{% get_navbar "primary" %}
Note: the quotes around the string you are sending to your inclusion tag are important. I spent a ridiculously lengthy bit of time trying to make it work before I figured that out.
Also a big thank you to dikamilo for the help.

Answer 2

First, in you view, get data from db:
def index(request):
navbar = Menu_item.objects.all()
return render_to_response( 'you_template.html',
{ 'navbar': navbar }, context_instance = RequestContext (request ) )
And in template:
<div id="nav">
<ul>
{% for i in navbar %}
<li>{{ i.name }}</li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>
</div>