caching parsed templates

Put this code somewhere in one of your INSTALLED_APPS __init__.py file. This code will replace the django.template.loader.get_template with cached version. Standard get_template function from django reads and parses the template code every time it's called. This version calls (if DEBUG set to False) it only once per template. After that it gets a Template object from template_cache dictionary. On django http server with template code like that:

{% extends "index.html" %}
{% block content %}
{% if form.has_errors %}
<p>Your username and password didn't match. Please try again.</p>
{% endif %}

<form method="post" action=".">
<table>
<tr><td><label for="id_username">Username:</label></td><td>{{ form.username }}</td></tr>
<tr><td><label for="id_password">Password:</label></td><td>{{ form.password }}</td></tr>
</table>

<input type="submit" value="login" />
<input type="hidden" name="next" value="{{ next }}" />
</form>

{% endblock %}

ab -n 100 on mac os x 10.5 core 2 duo 2 ghz with 2 GB of RAM gives

forge-macbook:~ forge$ ab -n 100 http://127.0.0.1:8000/login/
This is ApacheBench, Version 2.0.40-dev <$Revision: 1.146 $> apache-2.0
Copyright 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/
Copyright 2006 The Apache Software Foundation, http://www.apache.org/

Benchmarking 127.0.0.1 (be patient).....done

Server Software:        WSGIServer/0.1
Server Hostname:        127.0.0.1
Server Port:            8000

Document Path:          /login/
Document Length:        934 bytes

Concurrency Level:      1
Time taken for tests:   0.432934 seconds
Complete requests:      100
Failed requests:        0
Write errors:           0
Total transferred:      120200 bytes
HTML transferred:       93400 bytes
Requests per second:    230.98 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request:       4.329 [ms] (mean)
Time per request:       4.329 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate:          270.25 [Kbytes/sec] received

Connection Times (ms)
              min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
Connect:        0    0   0.0      0       0
Processing:     3    3   1.5      4      12
Waiting:        3    3   1.2      3      12
Total:          3    3   1.5      4      12

Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
  50%      4
  66%      4
  75%      4
  80%      4
  90%      4
  95%      5
  98%     10
  99%     12
 100%     12 (longest request)

without template caching, and

forge-macbook:~ forge$ ab -n 100 http://127.0.0.1:8000/login/
This is ApacheBench, Version 2.0.40-dev <$Revision: 1.146 $> apache-2.0
Copyright 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/
Copyright 2006 The Apache Software Foundation, http://www.apache.org/

Benchmarking 127.0.0.1 (be patient).....done

Server Software:        WSGIServer/0.1
Server Hostname:        127.0.0.1
Server Port:            8000

Document Path:          /login/
Document Length:        934 bytes

Concurrency Level:      1
Time taken for tests:   0.369860 seconds
Complete requests:      100
Failed requests:        0
Write errors:           0
Total transferred:      120200 bytes
HTML transferred:       93400 bytes
Requests per second:    270.37 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request:       3.699 [ms] (mean)
Time per request:       3.699 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate:          316.34 [Kbytes/sec] received

Connection Times (ms)
              min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
Connect:        0    0   0.0      0       0
Processing:     3    3   0.9      3       9
Waiting:        2    3   0.9      3       8
Total:          3    3   0.9      3       9

Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
  50%      3
  66%      3
  75%      3
  80%      3
  90%      3
  95%      5
  98%      8
  99%      9
 100%      9 (longest request)

with caching enabled. In both cases DEBUG is set to False.