Is there a way to pass a list or dict to a template as context?

[joe6pack]

Hello - I'm wondering if there's an existing way to pass a list or dict to a template as context. For example, say I have a list of cars that I want to display in a template. Is there a way I can pass something like the following as context to the template?

cars: [{'make':'BMW', 'model':'325i'},{'make':'Tesla','model':'X'}]

I would then reference them in the template as is typical in Django:

{% for car in cars %}
  {{ car.make }}, {{ car.model }}
{% endfor %}

Thanks for any guidance.

[krallin]

Yes; you can add this directly in plugins/page_context.py:

E.g.:

extra = {
    "CURRENT_PAGE": page  # This is already there
    "cars": [{'make':'BMW', 'model':'325i'},{'make':'Tesla','model':'X'}]  # This is yours
}

Cheers,

[joe6pack]

Thanks, @krallin! This is perhaps a daft question, but one that you probably know well: what is the recommended way to make the things you add in "extra" specific to a post page? Like if I have 10 post pages, each with different sets of cars (using my previous example) - what's the recommended way to add / reference them so that a single posts template can be used for all 10 pages?

[krallin]

Hey @joe6pack,

Didn't realize you intended to use this on separate pages. The following should work:

• Have each page declare its context like in this example. In your case, this might look like this:

cars: [{'make':'BMW', 'model':'325i'},{'make':'Tesla','model':'X'}]
{% extends 'car_listing.html' %}

Note: you do need to keep everything in cars on one line.

• Cactus will automatically load "[{'make':'BMW', 'model':'325i'},{'make':'Tesla','model':'X'}]" into a "cars" context variable. Unfortunately, it's loaded as a str, and you probably want it as a dict to be able to iterate on it.
• So, use the plugin to do parse the JSON string into a dict:

# At the top
import json

# Way below
extra = {
    "CURRENT_PAGE": page,
    "cars": json.loads(context["cars"])
}

Alternatively, you can also add all the logic in the plugin. Load the list of cars for each page from somewhere, then inspect page.source_path and load a list of cars into the context accordingly.

(This might be more maintainable!)