Django templates: value of dictionary key with a space in it

Question

In a Django template, is there a way to get a value from a key that has a space in it? Eg, if I have a dict like:

{\"Restaurant Name\": Foo}

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Answer 1

There is no clean way to do this with the built-in tags. Trying to do something like:

{{ a.'Restaurant Name'}} or {{ a.Restaurant Name }}

will throw a parse error.

You could do a for loop through the dictionary (but it's ugly/inefficient):

{% for k, v in your_dict_passed_into_context %}
   {% ifequal k "Restaurant Name" %}
       {{ v }}
   {% endifequal %}
{% endfor %}

A custom tag would probably be cleaner:

from django import template
register = template.Library()

@register.simple_tag
def dictKeyLookup(the_dict, key):
   # Try to fetch from the dict, and if it's not found return an empty string.
   return the_dict.get(key, '')

and use it in the template like so:

{% dictKeyLookup your_dict_passed_into_context "Restaurant Name" %}

Or maybe try to restructure your dict to have "easier to work with" keys.