template.RequestContext

class RequestContext(request, dict_=None, processors=None) [source]

Django comes with a special Context class, django.template.RequestContext, that acts slightly differently from the normal django.template.Context. The first difference is that it takes an HttpRequest as its first argument. For example:

c = RequestContext(request, {
    'foo': 'bar',
})

The second difference is that it automatically populates the context with a few variables, according to the engine’s context_processors configuration option.

The context_processors option is a list of callables – called context processors – that take a request object as their argument and return a dictionary of items to be merged into the context. In the default generated settings file, the default template engine contains the following context processors:

[
    'django.template.context_processors.debug',
    'django.template.context_processors.request',
    'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
    'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',
]

In addition to these, RequestContext always enables 'django.template.context_processors.csrf'. This is a security related context processor required by the admin and other contrib apps, and, in case of accidental misconfiguration, it is deliberately hardcoded in and cannot be turned off in the context_processors option.

Each processor is applied in order. That means, if one processor adds a variable to the context and a second processor adds a variable with the same name, the second will override the first. The default processors are explained below.

from django.template import RequestContext

request_context = RequestContext(request)
request_context.push({"my_name": "Adrian"})

Also, you can give RequestContext a list of additional processors, using the optional, third positional argument, processors. In this example, the RequestContext instance gets a ip_address variable:

from django.http import HttpResponse
from django.template import RequestContext, Template

def ip_address_processor(request):
    return {'ip_address': request.META['REMOTE_ADDR']}

def client_ip_view(request):
    template = Template('{{ title }}: {{ ip_address }}')
    context = RequestContext(request, {
        'title': 'Your IP Address',
    }, [ip_address_processor])
    return HttpResponse(template.render(context))