Show undefined variable errors in Django templates?

Question

How can I ask Django to tell me when it encounters, for example, an undefined variable error while it\'s rendering templates?

I\'ve tried the obvious DEBUG = T

Answer 1

Finding template variables that didn't exist in the context was important to me as several times bugs made it into production because views had changed but templates had not.

I used this technique, implemented in manage.py, to achieve the effect of breaking tests when template variables not found in the context were used. Note that this technique works with for loops and if statements and not just {{ variables }}.

import sys

# sometimes it's OK if a variable is undefined:
allowed_undefined_variables = [
    'variable_1',
    'variable_2',
]

if 'test' in sys.argv:
    import django.template.base as template_base

    old_resolve = template_base.Variable.resolve

    def new_resolve(self, context):
        try:
            value = old_resolve(self, context)
        except template_base.VariableDoesNotExist as e:
            # if it's not a variable that's allowed to not exist then raise a
            # base Exception so Nodes can't catch it (which will make the test
            # fail)
            if self.var not in allowed_undefined_variables:
                raise Exception(e)

            # re-raise the original and let the individual Nodes deal with it
            # however they'd like
            raise e

        return value

    template_base.Variable.resolve = new_resolve