Accessing dict elements with leading underscores in Django Templates

Question

I am trying to access elements of a dict with keys that start with the underscore character. For example:

my_dict = {\"_source\": \'xyz\'}

I\'m

Answer 1

In my case, if I know the dict elements, and it's only one, I prefer to rename the dict key using pop:

my_dict['new_key'] = my_dict.pop('_old_key')

That way I get a new name on the dict, and I can access in the template without problems.

Answer 2

The docs mention that you can't have a variable start with an underscore:

Variable names must consist of any letter (A-Z), any digit (0-9), an underscore (but they must not start with an underscore) or a dot.

but you can easily write a custom template filter to mimic the dictionary's get method:

@register.filter(name='get')
def get(d, k):
    return d.get(k, None)

and

{{ my_dict|get:"_my_key" }}