Chapter 4. Templates

In the previous chapter, you may have noticed something peculiar in how we returned the text in our example views. Namely, the HTML was hard-coded directly in our Python code, like this:

def current_datetime(request):
    now = datetime.datetime.now()
    html = "<html><body>It is now %s.</body></html>" % now
    return HttpResponse(html)

Although this technique was convenient for the purpose of explaining how views work, it's not a good idea to hard-code HTML directly in your views. Here's why:

  • Any change to the design of the page requires a change to the Python code. The design of a site tends to change far more frequently than the underlying Python code, so it would be convenient if the design could change without needing to modify the ...

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