Django: custom 404 handler that returns 404 status code - django

Question

The project I'm working on has some data that needs to get passed to every view, so we have a wrapper around render_to_response called master_rtr. Ok.
Now, I need our 404 pages to run through this as well. Per the instructions, I created a custom 404 handler (cleverly called custom_404) that calls master_rtr. Everything looks good, but our tests are failing, because we're receiving back a 200 OK.
So, I'm trying to figure out how to return a 404 status code, instead. There seems to be an HttpResponseNotFound class that's kinda what I want, but I'm not quite sure how to construct all of that nonsense instead of using render_to_response. Or rather, I could probably figure it out, but it seems like their must be an easier way; is there?
The appropriate parts of the code:
def master_rtr(request, template, data = {}):
if request.user.is_authenticated():
# Since we're only grabbing the enrollments to get at the courses,
# doing select_related() will save us from having to hit database for
# every course the user is enrolled in
data['courses'] = \
[e.course for e in \
Enrollment.objects.select_related().filter(user=request.user) \
if e.view]
else:
if "anonCourses" in request.session:
data['courses'] = request.session['anonCourses']
else:
data['courses'] = []
data['THEME'] = settings.THEME
return render_to_response(template, data, context_instance=RequestContext(request))
def custom_404(request):
response = master_rtr(request, '404.html')
response.status_code = 404
return response

Answer 1

The easy way:
def custom_404(request):
response = master_rtr(...)
response.status_code = 404
return response
But I have to ask: why aren't you just using a context processor along with a RequestContext to pass the data to the views?

Answer 2

Just set status_code on the response.

Answer 3

Into your application's views.py add:
# Imports
from django.shortcuts import render
from django.http import HttpResponse
from django.template import Context, loader
##
# Handle 404 Errors
# #param request WSGIRequest list with all HTTP Request
def error404(request):
# 1. Load models for this view
#from idgsupply.models import My404Method
# 2. Generate Content for this view
template = loader.get_template('404.htm')
context = Context({
'message': 'All: %s' % request,
})
# 3. Return Template for this view + Data
return HttpResponse(content=template.render(context), content_type='text/html; charset=utf-8', status=404)
The secret is in the last line: status=404
Hope it helped!