Tag "doctest"

testdata tag for templates

The "testdata" tag allows you to inline test data into your templates, similar in spirit to Python doctests. There are two sections--the test data and the actual template to be rendered. In non-test mode your template renders normally from whatever views call it, and there is very little overhead to skip over the test data section (happens at parse time). Here are the goals: 1. Provide convenient way to test templates without surrounding infrastructure. 2. Make templates be self-documenting in terms of expected data. 3. Allow insertion of test data at arbitrary places in template structure. Hello-world looks like this: {% load handytags %} {% testdata %} { 'greeting': 'Hello', 'planet': 'World', } {% --- %} {# This is where the actual template begins #} {{ greeting }} <b>{{ planet }}</b> {% endtestdata %} To invoke it, set up urls.py with something like this: url(r'^testdata/(?P<template_path>.*)', test_template) def test_template(request, template_path): context = {'testdata_use': True} # put request vars into context to help choose # which test data we want to render for field in request.GET: context[field] = request.GET[field] return render_with_request(template_path, context, request) Then call: http://127.0.0.1:8000/testdata/hello_world.html Features: 1. The testdata tag's rendering will expose missing variables a bit more aggressively than Django normally does. 2. You have the full power of the template language to set the test data (which ultimately gets eval'ed as a Python expression). 3. As mentioned above, the tag is mostly unobtrusive. Limitations/caveats: 1. Right now the only data format I support is pure Python, but the tag could be modified pretty easily to support JSON or YAML. 2. The VerboseContext class is pretty heavy-handed--I really just want a hook into Django to tell it to render a section with more strictness about variables. Suggestions welcome. 3. You can put the testdata tag pretty much anywhere, but the normal rules apply...for example, if you are in a template that has the extend tag, you'll want to put the testdata tag in individual blocks.