5 :synopsis: public Jinja2 API
7 This document describes the API to Jinja2 and not the template language. It
8 will be most useful as reference to those implementing the template interface
9 to the application and not those who are creating Jinja2 templates.
14 Jinja2 uses a central object called the template :class:`Environment`.
15 Instances of this class are used to store the configuration, global objects
16 and are used to load templates from the file system or other locations.
17 Even if you are creating templates from strings by using the constructor of
18 :class:`Template` class, an environment is created automatically for you,
21 Most applications will create one :class:`Environment` object on application
22 initialization and use that to load templates. In some cases it's however
23 useful to have multiple environments side by side, if different configurations
26 The simplest way to configure Jinja2 to load templates for your application
27 looks roughly like this::
29 from jinja2 import Environment, PackageLoader
30 env = Environment(loader=PackageLoader('yourapplication', 'templates'))
32 This will create a template environment with the default settings and a
33 loader that looks up the templates in the `templates` folder inside the
34 `yourapplication` python package. Different loaders are available
35 and you can also write your own if you want to load templates from a
36 database or other resources.
38 To load a template from this environment you just have to call the
39 :meth:`get_template` method which then returns the loaded :class:`Template`::
41 template = env.get_template('mytemplate.html')
43 To render it with some variables, just call the :meth:`render` method::
45 print template.render(the='variables', go='here')
47 Using a template loader rather then passing strings to :class:`Template`
48 or :meth:`Environment.from_string` has multiple advantages. Besides being
49 a lot easier to use it also enables template inheritance.
55 Jinja2 is using Unicode internally which means that you have to pass Unicode
56 objects to the render function or bytestrings that only consist of ASCII
57 characters. Additionally newlines are normalized to one end of line
58 sequence which is per default UNIX style (``\n``).
60 Python 2.x supports two ways of representing string objects. One is the
61 `str` type and the other is the `unicode` type, both of which extend a type
62 called `basestring`. Unfortunately the default is `str` which should not
63 be used to store text based information unless only ASCII characters are
64 used. With Python 2.6 it is possible to make `unicode` the default on a per
65 module level and with Python 3 it will be the default.
67 To explicitly use a Unicode string you have to prefix the string literal
68 with a `u`: ``u'Hänsel und Gretel sagen Hallo'``. That way Python will
69 store the string as Unicode by decoding the string with the character
70 encoding from the current Python module. If no encoding is specified this
71 defaults to 'ASCII' which means that you can't use any non ASCII identifier.
73 To set a better module encoding add the following comment to the first or
74 second line of the Python module using the Unicode literal::
76 # -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
78 We recommend utf-8 as Encoding for Python modules and templates as it's
79 possible to represent every Unicode character in utf-8 and because it's
80 backwards compatible to ASCII. For Jinja2 the default encoding of templates
81 is assumed to be utf-8.
83 It is not possible to use Jinja2 to process non-Unicode data. The reason
84 for this is that Jinja2 uses Unicode already on the language level. For
85 example Jinja2 treats the non-breaking space as valid whitespace inside
86 expressions which requires knowledge of the encoding or operating on an
89 For more details about Unicode in Python have a look at the excellent
90 `Unicode documentation`_.
92 Another important thing is how Jinja2 is handling string literals in
93 templates. A naive implementation would be using Unicode strings for
94 all string literals but it turned out in the past that this is problematic
95 as some libraries are typechecking against `str` explicitly. For example
96 `datetime.strftime` does not accept Unicode arguments. To not break it
97 completely Jinja2 is returning `str` for strings that fit into ASCII and
98 for everything else `unicode`:
100 >>> m = Template(u"{% set a, b = 'foo', 'föö' %}").module
107 .. _Unicode documentation: http://docs.python.org/dev/howto/unicode.html
112 The high-level API is the API you will use in the application to load and
113 render Jinja2 templates. The :ref:`low-level-api` on the other side is only
114 useful if you want to dig deeper into Jinja2 or :ref:`develop extensions
117 .. autoclass:: Environment([options])
118 :members: from_string, get_template, select_template,
119 get_or_select_template, join_path, extend, compile_expression,
120 compile_templates, list_templates
122 .. attribute:: shared
124 If a template was created by using the :class:`Template` constructor
125 an environment is created automatically. These environments are
126 created as shared environments which means that multiple templates
127 may have the same anonymous environment. For all shared environments
128 this attribute is `True`, else `False`.
130 .. attribute:: sandboxed
132 If the environment is sandboxed this attribute is `True`. For the
133 sandbox mode have a look at the documentation for the
134 :class:`~jinja2.sandbox.SandboxedEnvironment`.
136 .. attribute:: filters
138 A dict of filters for this environment. As long as no template was
139 loaded it's safe to add new filters or remove old. For custom filters
140 see :ref:`writing-filters`. For valid filter names have a look at
141 :ref:`identifier-naming`.
145 A dict of test functions for this environment. As long as no
146 template was loaded it's safe to modify this dict. For custom tests
147 see :ref:`writing-tests`. For valid test names have a look at
148 :ref:`identifier-naming`.
150 .. attribute:: globals
152 A dict of global variables. These variables are always available
153 in a template. As long as no template was loaded it's safe
154 to modify this dict. For more details see :ref:`global-namespace`.
155 For valid object names have a look at :ref:`identifier-naming`.
157 .. automethod:: overlay([options])
159 .. method:: undefined([hint, obj, name, exc])
161 Creates a new :class:`Undefined` object for `name`. This is useful
162 for filters or functions that may return undefined objects for
163 some operations. All parameters except of `hint` should be provided
164 as keyword parameters for better readability. The `hint` is used as
165 error message for the exception if provided, otherwise the error
166 message will be generated from `obj` and `name` automatically. The exception
167 provided as `exc` is raised if something with the generated undefined
168 object is done that the undefined object does not allow. The default
169 exception is :exc:`UndefinedError`. If a `hint` is provided the
170 `name` may be ommited.
172 The most common way to create an undefined object is by providing
175 return environment.undefined(name='some_name')
177 This means that the name `some_name` is not defined. If the name
178 was from an attribute of an object it makes sense to tell the
179 undefined object the holder object to improve the error message::
181 if not hasattr(obj, 'attr'):
182 return environment.undefined(obj=obj, name='attr')
184 For a more complex example you can provide a hint. For example
185 the :func:`first` filter creates an undefined object that way::
187 return environment.undefined('no first item, sequence was empty')
189 If it the `name` or `obj` is known (for example because an attribute
190 was accessed) it shold be passed to the undefined object, even if
191 a custom `hint` is provided. This gives undefined objects the
192 possibility to enhance the error message.
194 .. autoclass:: Template
195 :members: module, make_module
197 .. attribute:: globals
199 The dict with the globals of that template. It's unsafe to modify
200 this dict as it may be shared with other templates or the environment
201 that loaded the template.
205 The loading name of the template. If the template was loaded from a
206 string this is `None`.
208 .. attribute:: filename
210 The filename of the template on the file system if it was loaded from
211 there. Otherwise this is `None`.
213 .. automethod:: render([context])
215 .. automethod:: generate([context])
217 .. automethod:: stream([context])
220 .. autoclass:: jinja2.environment.TemplateStream()
221 :members: disable_buffering, enable_buffering, dump
227 .. versionadded:: 2.4
229 As of Jinja 2.4 the preferred way to do autoescaping is to enable the
230 :ref:`autoescape-extension` and to configure a sensible default for
231 autoescaping. This makes it possible to enable and disable autoescaping
232 on a per-template basis (HTML versus text for instance).
234 Here a recommended setup that enables autoescaping for templates ending
235 in ``'.html'``, ``'.htm'`` and ``'.xml'`` and disabling it by default
236 for all other extensions::
238 def guess_autoescape(template_name):
239 if template_name is None or '.' not in template_name:
241 ext = template_name.rsplit('.', 1)[1]
242 return ext in ('html', 'htm', 'xml')
244 env = Environment(autoescape=guess_autoescape,
245 loader=PackageLoader('mypackage'),
246 extensions=['jinja2.ext.autoescape'])
248 When implementing a guessing autoescape function, make sure you also
249 accept `None` as valid template name. This will be passed when generating
250 templates from strings.
252 Inside the templates the behaviour can be temporarily changed by using
253 the `autoescape` block (see :ref:`autoescape-overrides`).
256 .. _identifier-naming:
261 Jinja2 uses the regular Python 2.x naming rules. Valid identifiers have to
262 match ``[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*``. As a matter of fact non ASCII characters
263 are currently not allowed. This limitation will probably go away as soon as
264 unicode identifiers are fully specified for Python 3.
266 Filters and tests are looked up in separate namespaces and have slightly
267 modified identifier syntax. Filters and tests may contain dots to group
268 filters and tests by topic. For example it's perfectly valid to add a
269 function into the filter dict and call it `to.unicode`. The regular
270 expression for filter and test identifiers is
271 ``[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*(\.[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*)*```.
277 These classes can be used as undefined types. The :class:`Environment`
278 constructor takes an `undefined` parameter that can be one of those classes
279 or a custom subclass of :class:`Undefined`. Whenever the template engine is
280 unable to look up a name or access an attribute one of those objects is
281 created and returned. Some operations on undefined values are then allowed,
284 The closest to regular Python behavior is the `StrictUndefined` which
285 disallows all operations beside testing if it's an undefined object.
287 .. autoclass:: jinja2.Undefined()
289 .. attribute:: _undefined_hint
291 Either `None` or an unicode string with the error message for
292 the undefined object.
294 .. attribute:: _undefined_obj
296 Either `None` or the owner object that caused the undefined object
297 to be created (for example because an attribute does not exist).
299 .. attribute:: _undefined_name
301 The name for the undefined variable / attribute or just `None`
302 if no such information exists.
304 .. attribute:: _undefined_exception
306 The exception that the undefined object wants to raise. This
307 is usually one of :exc:`UndefinedError` or :exc:`SecurityError`.
309 .. method:: _fail_with_undefined_error(\*args, \**kwargs)
311 When called with any arguments this method raises
312 :attr:`_undefined_exception` with an error message generated
313 from the undefined hints stored on the undefined object.
315 .. autoclass:: jinja2.DebugUndefined()
317 .. autoclass:: jinja2.StrictUndefined()
319 Undefined objects are created by calling :attr:`undefined`.
321 .. admonition:: Implementation
323 :class:`Undefined` objects are implemented by overriding the special
324 `__underscore__` methods. For example the default :class:`Undefined`
325 class implements `__unicode__` in a way that it returns an empty
326 string, however `__int__` and others still fail with an exception. To
327 allow conversion to int by returning ``0`` you can implement your own::
329 class NullUndefined(Undefined):
335 To disallow a method, just override it and raise
336 :attr:`~Undefined._undefined_exception`. Because this is a very common
337 idom in undefined objects there is the helper method
338 :meth:`~Undefined._fail_with_undefined_error` that does the error raising
339 automatically. Here a class that works like the regular :class:`Undefined`
340 but chokes on iteration::
342 class NonIterableUndefined(Undefined):
343 __iter__ = Undefined._fail_with_undefined_error
349 .. autoclass:: jinja2.runtime.Context()
350 :members: resolve, get_exported, get_all
352 .. attribute:: parent
354 A dict of read only, global variables the template looks up. These
355 can either come from another :class:`Context`, from the
356 :attr:`Environment.globals` or :attr:`Template.globals` or points
357 to a dict created by combining the globals with the variables
358 passed to the render function. It must not be altered.
362 The template local variables. This list contains environment and
363 context functions from the :attr:`parent` scope as well as local
364 modifications and exported variables from the template. The template
365 will modify this dict during template evaluation but filters and
366 context functions are not allowed to modify it.
368 .. attribute:: environment
370 The environment that loaded the template.
372 .. attribute:: exported_vars
374 This set contains all the names the template exports. The values for
375 the names are in the :attr:`vars` dict. In order to get a copy of the
376 exported variables as dict, :meth:`get_exported` can be used.
380 The load name of the template owning this context.
382 .. attribute:: blocks
384 A dict with the current mapping of blocks in the template. The keys
385 in this dict are the names of the blocks, and the values a list of
386 blocks registered. The last item in each list is the current active
387 block (latest in the inheritance chain).
389 .. attribute:: eval_ctx
391 The current :ref:`eval-context`.
393 .. automethod:: jinja2.runtime.Context.call(callable, \*args, \**kwargs)
396 .. admonition:: Implementation
398 Context is immutable for the same reason Python's frame locals are
399 immutable inside functions. Both Jinja2 and Python are not using the
400 context / frame locals as data storage for variables but only as primary
403 When a template accesses a variable the template does not define, Jinja2
404 looks up the variable in the context, after that the variable is treated
405 as if it was defined in the template.
413 Loaders are responsible for loading templates from a resource such as the
414 file system. The environment will keep the compiled modules in memory like
415 Python's `sys.modules`. Unlike `sys.modules` however this cache is limited in
416 size by default and templates are automatically reloaded.
417 All loaders are subclasses of :class:`BaseLoader`. If you want to create your
418 own loader, subclass :class:`BaseLoader` and override `get_source`.
420 .. autoclass:: jinja2.BaseLoader
421 :members: get_source, load
423 Here a list of the builtin loaders Jinja2 provides:
425 .. autoclass:: jinja2.FileSystemLoader
427 .. autoclass:: jinja2.PackageLoader
429 .. autoclass:: jinja2.DictLoader
431 .. autoclass:: jinja2.FunctionLoader
433 .. autoclass:: jinja2.PrefixLoader
435 .. autoclass:: jinja2.ChoiceLoader
437 .. autoclass:: jinja2.ModuleLoader
445 Jinja 2.1 and higher support external bytecode caching. Bytecode caches make
446 it possible to store the generated bytecode on the file system or a different
447 location to avoid parsing the templates on first use.
449 This is especially useful if you have a web application that is initialized on
450 the first request and Jinja compiles many templates at once which slows down
453 To use a bytecode cache, instanciate it and pass it to the :class:`Environment`.
455 .. autoclass:: jinja2.BytecodeCache
456 :members: load_bytecode, dump_bytecode, clear
458 .. autoclass:: jinja2.bccache.Bucket
459 :members: write_bytecode, load_bytecode, bytecode_from_string,
460 bytecode_to_string, reset
462 .. attribute:: environment
464 The :class:`Environment` that created the bucket.
468 The unique cache key for this bucket
472 The bytecode if it's loaded, otherwise `None`.
475 Builtin bytecode caches:
477 .. autoclass:: jinja2.FileSystemBytecodeCache
479 .. autoclass:: jinja2.MemcachedBytecodeCache
485 These helper functions and classes are useful if you add custom filters or
486 functions to a Jinja2 environment.
488 .. autofunction:: jinja2.environmentfilter
490 .. autofunction:: jinja2.contextfilter
492 .. autofunction:: jinja2.evalcontextfilter
494 .. autofunction:: jinja2.environmentfunction
496 .. autofunction:: jinja2.contextfunction
498 .. autofunction:: jinja2.evalcontextfunction
500 .. function:: escape(s)
502 Convert the characters ``&``, ``<``, ``>``, ``'``, and ``"`` in string `s`
503 to HTML-safe sequences. Use this if you need to display text that might
504 contain such characters in HTML. This function will not escaped objects
505 that do have an HTML representation such as already escaped data.
507 The return value is a :class:`Markup` string.
509 .. autofunction:: jinja2.clear_caches
511 .. autofunction:: jinja2.is_undefined
513 .. autoclass:: jinja2.Markup([string])
514 :members: escape, unescape, striptags
518 The Jinja2 :class:`Markup` class is compatible with at least Pylons and
519 Genshi. It's expected that more template engines and framework will pick
520 up the `__html__` concept soon.
526 .. autoexception:: jinja2.TemplateError
528 .. autoexception:: jinja2.UndefinedError
530 .. autoexception:: jinja2.TemplateNotFound
532 .. autoexception:: jinja2.TemplatesNotFound
534 .. autoexception:: jinja2.TemplateSyntaxError
536 .. attribute:: message
538 The error message as utf-8 bytestring.
540 .. attribute:: lineno
542 The line number where the error occurred
546 The load name for the template as unicode string.
548 .. attribute:: filename
550 The filename that loaded the template as bytestring in the encoding
551 of the file system (most likely utf-8 or mbcs on Windows systems).
553 The reason why the filename and error message are bytestrings and not
554 unicode strings is that Python 2.x is not using unicode for exceptions
555 and tracebacks as well as the compiler. This will change with Python 3.
557 .. autoexception:: jinja2.TemplateAssertionError
565 Custom filters are just regular Python functions that take the left side of
566 the filter as first argument and the the arguments passed to the filter as
567 extra arguments or keyword arguments.
569 For example in the filter ``{{ 42|myfilter(23) }}`` the function would be
570 called with ``myfilter(42, 23)``. Here for example a simple filter that can
571 be applied to datetime objects to format them::
573 def datetimeformat(value, format='%H:%M / %d-%m-%Y'):
574 return value.strftime(format)
576 You can register it on the template environment by updating the
577 :attr:`~Environment.filters` dict on the environment::
579 environment.filters['datetimeformat'] = datetimeformat
581 Inside the template it can then be used as follows:
583 .. sourcecode:: jinja
585 written on: {{ article.pub_date|datetimeformat }}
586 publication date: {{ article.pub_date|datetimeformat('%d-%m-%Y') }}
588 Filters can also be passed the current template context or environment. This
589 is useful if a filter wants to return an undefined value or check the current
590 :attr:`~Environment.autoescape` setting. For this purpose three decorators
591 exist: :func:`environmentfilter`, :func:`contextfilter` and
592 :func:`evalcontextfilter`.
594 Here a small example filter that breaks a text into HTML line breaks and
595 paragraphs and marks the return value as safe HTML string if autoescaping is
599 from jinja2 import evalcontextfilter, Markup, escape
601 _paragraph_re = re.compile(r'(?:\r\n|\r|\n){2,}')
604 def nl2br(eval_ctx, value):
605 result = u'\n\n'.join(u'<p>%s</p>' % p.replace('\n', '<br>\n')
606 for p in _paragraph_re.split(escape(value)))
607 if eval_ctx.autoescape:
608 result = Markup(result)
611 Context filters work the same just that the first argument is the current
612 active :class:`Context` rather then the environment.
620 The evaluation context (short eval context or eval ctx) is a new object
621 introducted in Jinja 2.4 that makes it possible to activate and deactivate
622 compiled features at runtime.
624 Currently it is only used to enable and disable the automatic escaping but
625 can be used for extensions as well.
627 In previous Jinja versions filters and functions were marked as
628 environment callables in order to check for the autoescape status from the
629 environment. In new versions it's encouraged to check the setting from the
630 evaluation context instead.
635 def filter(env, value):
636 result = do_something(value)
638 result = Markup(result)
641 In new versions you can either use a :func:`contextfilter` and access the
642 evaluation context from the actual context, or use a
643 :func:`evalcontextfilter` which directly passes the evaluation context to
647 def filter(context, value):
648 result = do_something(value)
649 if context.eval_ctx.autoescape:
650 result = Markup(result)
654 def filter(eval_ctx, value):
655 result = do_something(value)
656 if eval_ctx.autoescape:
657 result = Markup(result)
660 The evaluation context must not be modified at runtime. Modifications
661 must only happen with a :class:`nodes.EvalContextModifier` and
662 :class:`nodes.ScopedEvalContextModifier` from an extension, not on the
663 eval context object itself.
665 .. autoclass:: jinja2.nodes.EvalContext
667 .. attribute:: autoescape
669 `True` or `False` depending on if autoescaping is active or not.
671 .. attribute:: volatile
673 `True` if the compiler cannot evaluate some expressions at compile
674 time. At runtime this should always be `False`.
682 Tests work like filters just that there is no way for a test to get access
683 to the environment or context and that they can't be chained. The return
684 value of a test should be `True` or `False`. The purpose of a test is to
685 give the template designers the possibility to perform type and conformability
688 Here a simple test that checks if a variable is a prime number::
695 for i in xrange(2, int(math.ceil(math.sqrt(n))) + 1):
701 You can register it on the template environment by updating the
702 :attr:`~Environment.tests` dict on the environment::
704 environment.tests['prime'] = is_prime
706 A template designer can then use the test like this:
708 .. sourcecode:: jinja
713 42 is not a prime number
717 .. _global-namespace:
722 Variables stored in the :attr:`Environment.globals` dict are special as they
723 are available for imported templates too, even if they are imported without
724 context. This is the place where you can put variables and functions
725 that should be available all the time. Additionally :attr:`Template.globals`
726 exist that are variables available to a specific template that are available
727 to all :meth:`~Template.render` calls.
735 The low level API exposes functionality that can be useful to understand some
736 implementation details, debugging purposes or advanced :ref:`extension
737 <jinja-extensions>` techniques. Unless you know exactly what you are doing we
738 don't recommend using any of those.
740 .. automethod:: Environment.lex
742 .. automethod:: Environment.parse
744 .. automethod:: Environment.preprocess
746 .. automethod:: Template.new_context
748 .. method:: Template.root_render_func(context)
750 This is the low level render function. It's passed a :class:`Context`
751 that has to be created by :meth:`new_context` of the same template or
752 a compatible template. This render function is generated by the
753 compiler from the template code and returns a generator that yields
756 If an exception in the template code happens the template engine will
757 not rewrite the exception but pass through the original one. As a
758 matter of fact this function should only be called from within a
759 :meth:`render` / :meth:`generate` / :meth:`stream` call.
761 .. attribute:: Template.blocks
763 A dict of block render functions. Each of these functions works exactly
764 like the :meth:`root_render_func` with the same limitations.
766 .. attribute:: Template.is_up_to_date
768 This attribute is `False` if there is a newer version of the template
769 available, otherwise `True`.
773 The low-level API is fragile. Future Jinja2 versions will try not to
774 change it in a backwards incompatible way but modifications in the Jinja2
775 core may shine through. For example if Jinja2 introduces a new AST node
776 in later versions that may be returned by :meth:`~Environment.parse`.
781 .. versionadded:: 2.2
783 The meta API returns some information about abstract syntax trees that
784 could help applications to implement more advanced template concepts. All
785 the functions of the meta API operate on an abstract syntax tree as
786 returned by the :meth:`Environment.parse` method.
788 .. autofunction:: jinja2.meta.find_undeclared_variables
790 .. autofunction:: jinja2.meta.find_referenced_templates