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
121 .. attribute:: shared
123 If a template was created by using the :class:`Template` constructor
124 an environment is created automatically. These environments are
125 created as shared environments which means that multiple templates
126 may have the same anonymous environment. For all shared environments
127 this attribute is `True`, else `False`.
129 .. attribute:: sandboxed
131 If the environment is sandboxed this attribute is `True`. For the
132 sandbox mode have a look at the documentation for the
133 :class:`~jinja2.sandbox.SandboxedEnvironment`.
135 .. attribute:: filters
137 A dict of filters for this environment. As long as no template was
138 loaded it's safe to add new filters or remove old. For custom filters
139 see :ref:`writing-filters`. For valid filter names have a look at
140 :ref:`identifier-naming`.
144 A dict of test functions for this environment. As long as no
145 template was loaded it's safe to modify this dict. For custom tests
146 see :ref:`writing-tests`. For valid test names have a look at
147 :ref:`identifier-naming`.
149 .. attribute:: globals
151 A dict of global variables. These variables are always available
152 in a template. As long as no template was loaded it's safe
153 to modify this dict. For more details see :ref:`global-namespace`.
154 For valid object names have a look at :ref:`identifier-naming`.
156 .. automethod:: overlay([options])
158 .. method:: undefined([hint, obj, name, exc])
160 Creates a new :class:`Undefined` object for `name`. This is useful
161 for filters or functions that may return undefined objects for
162 some operations. All parameters except of `hint` should be provided
163 as keyword parameters for better readability. The `hint` is used as
164 error message for the exception if provided, otherwise the error
165 message will be generated from `obj` and `name` automatically. The exception
166 provided as `exc` is raised if something with the generated undefined
167 object is done that the undefined object does not allow. The default
168 exception is :exc:`UndefinedError`. If a `hint` is provided the
169 `name` may be ommited.
171 The most common way to create an undefined object is by providing
174 return environment.undefined(name='some_name')
176 This means that the name `some_name` is not defined. If the name
177 was from an attribute of an object it makes sense to tell the
178 undefined object the holder object to improve the error message::
180 if not hasattr(obj, 'attr'):
181 return environment.undefined(obj=obj, name='attr')
183 For a more complex example you can provide a hint. For example
184 the :func:`first` filter creates an undefined object that way::
186 return environment.undefined('no first item, sequence was empty')
188 If it the `name` or `obj` is known (for example because an attribute
189 was accessed) it shold be passed to the undefined object, even if
190 a custom `hint` is provided. This gives undefined objects the
191 possibility to enhance the error message.
193 .. autoclass:: Template
194 :members: module, make_module
196 .. attribute:: globals
198 The dict with the globals of that template. It's unsafe to modify
199 this dict as it may be shared with other templates or the environment
200 that loaded the template.
204 The loading name of the template. If the template was loaded from a
205 string this is `None`.
207 .. attribute:: filename
209 The filename of the template on the file system if it was loaded from
210 there. Otherwise this is `None`.
212 .. automethod:: render([context])
214 .. automethod:: generate([context])
216 .. automethod:: stream([context])
219 .. autoclass:: jinja2.environment.TemplateStream()
220 :members: disable_buffering, enable_buffering, dump
226 .. versionadded:: 2.4
228 As of Jinja 2.4 the preferred way to do autoescaping is to enable the
229 :ref:`autoescape-extension` and to configure a sensible default for
230 autoescaping. This makes it possible to enable and disable autoescaping
231 on a per-template basis (HTML versus text for instance).
233 Here a recommended setup that enables autoescaping for templates ending
234 in ``'.html'``, ``'.htm'`` and ``'.xml'`` and disabling it by default
235 for all other extensions::
237 def guess_autoescape(template_name):
238 if template_name is None or '.' not in template_name:
240 ext = template_name.rsplit('.', 1)[1]
241 return ext in ('html', 'htm', 'xml')
243 env = Environment(autoescape=guess_autoescape,
244 loader=PackageLoader('mypackage'),
245 extensions=['jinja2.ext.autoescape'])
247 When implementing a guessing autoescape function, make sure you also
248 accept `None` as valid template name. This will be passed when generating
249 templates from strings.
251 Inside the templates the behaviour can be temporarily changed by using
252 the `autoescape` block (see :ref:`autoescape-overrides`).
255 .. _identifier-naming:
260 Jinja2 uses the regular Python 2.x naming rules. Valid identifiers have to
261 match ``[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*``. As a matter of fact non ASCII characters
262 are currently not allowed. This limitation will probably go away as soon as
263 unicode identifiers are fully specified for Python 3.
265 Filters and tests are looked up in separate namespaces and have slightly
266 modified identifier syntax. Filters and tests may contain dots to group
267 filters and tests by topic. For example it's perfectly valid to add a
268 function into the filter dict and call it `to.unicode`. The regular
269 expression for filter and test identifiers is
270 ``[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*(\.[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*)*```.
276 These classes can be used as undefined types. The :class:`Environment`
277 constructor takes an `undefined` parameter that can be one of those classes
278 or a custom subclass of :class:`Undefined`. Whenever the template engine is
279 unable to look up a name or access an attribute one of those objects is
280 created and returned. Some operations on undefined values are then allowed,
283 The closest to regular Python behavior is the `StrictUndefined` which
284 disallows all operations beside testing if it's an undefined object.
286 .. autoclass:: jinja2.Undefined()
288 .. attribute:: _undefined_hint
290 Either `None` or an unicode string with the error message for
291 the undefined object.
293 .. attribute:: _undefined_obj
295 Either `None` or the owner object that caused the undefined object
296 to be created (for example because an attribute does not exist).
298 .. attribute:: _undefined_name
300 The name for the undefined variable / attribute or just `None`
301 if no such information exists.
303 .. attribute:: _undefined_exception
305 The exception that the undefined object wants to raise. This
306 is usually one of :exc:`UndefinedError` or :exc:`SecurityError`.
308 .. method:: _fail_with_undefined_error(\*args, \**kwargs)
310 When called with any arguments this method raises
311 :attr:`_undefined_exception` with an error message generated
312 from the undefined hints stored on the undefined object.
314 .. autoclass:: jinja2.DebugUndefined()
316 .. autoclass:: jinja2.StrictUndefined()
318 Undefined objects are created by calling :attr:`undefined`.
320 .. admonition:: Implementation
322 :class:`Undefined` objects are implemented by overriding the special
323 `__underscore__` methods. For example the default :class:`Undefined`
324 class implements `__unicode__` in a way that it returns an empty
325 string, however `__int__` and others still fail with an exception. To
326 allow conversion to int by returning ``0`` you can implement your own::
328 class NullUndefined(Undefined):
334 To disallow a method, just override it and raise
335 :attr:`~Undefined._undefined_exception`. Because this is a very common
336 idom in undefined objects there is the helper method
337 :meth:`~Undefined._fail_with_undefined_error` that does the error raising
338 automatically. Here a class that works like the regular :class:`Undefined`
339 but chokes on iteration::
341 class NonIterableUndefined(Undefined):
342 __iter__ = Undefined._fail_with_undefined_error
348 .. autoclass:: jinja2.runtime.Context()
349 :members: resolve, get_exported, get_all
351 .. attribute:: parent
353 A dict of read only, global variables the template looks up. These
354 can either come from another :class:`Context`, from the
355 :attr:`Environment.globals` or :attr:`Template.globals` or points
356 to a dict created by combining the globals with the variables
357 passed to the render function. It must not be altered.
361 The template local variables. This list contains environment and
362 context functions from the :attr:`parent` scope as well as local
363 modifications and exported variables from the template. The template
364 will modify this dict during template evaluation but filters and
365 context functions are not allowed to modify it.
367 .. attribute:: environment
369 The environment that loaded the template.
371 .. attribute:: exported_vars
373 This set contains all the names the template exports. The values for
374 the names are in the :attr:`vars` dict. In order to get a copy of the
375 exported variables as dict, :meth:`get_exported` can be used.
379 The load name of the template owning this context.
381 .. attribute:: blocks
383 A dict with the current mapping of blocks in the template. The keys
384 in this dict are the names of the blocks, and the values a list of
385 blocks registered. The last item in each list is the current active
386 block (latest in the inheritance chain).
388 .. attribute:: eval_ctx
390 The current :ref:`eval-context`.
392 .. automethod:: jinja2.runtime.Context.call(callable, \*args, \**kwargs)
395 .. admonition:: Implementation
397 Context is immutable for the same reason Python's frame locals are
398 immutable inside functions. Both Jinja2 and Python are not using the
399 context / frame locals as data storage for variables but only as primary
402 When a template accesses a variable the template does not define, Jinja2
403 looks up the variable in the context, after that the variable is treated
404 as if it was defined in the template.
412 Loaders are responsible for loading templates from a resource such as the
413 file system. The environment will keep the compiled modules in memory like
414 Python's `sys.modules`. Unlike `sys.modules` however this cache is limited in
415 size by default and templates are automatically reloaded.
416 All loaders are subclasses of :class:`BaseLoader`. If you want to create your
417 own loader, subclass :class:`BaseLoader` and override `get_source`.
419 .. autoclass:: jinja2.BaseLoader
420 :members: get_source, load
422 Here a list of the builtin loaders Jinja2 provides:
424 .. autoclass:: jinja2.FileSystemLoader
426 .. autoclass:: jinja2.PackageLoader
428 .. autoclass:: jinja2.DictLoader
430 .. autoclass:: jinja2.FunctionLoader
432 .. autoclass:: jinja2.PrefixLoader
434 .. autoclass:: jinja2.ChoiceLoader
442 Jinja 2.1 and higher support external bytecode caching. Bytecode caches make
443 it possible to store the generated bytecode on the file system or a different
444 location to avoid parsing the templates on first use.
446 This is especially useful if you have a web application that is initialized on
447 the first request and Jinja compiles many templates at once which slows down
450 To use a bytecode cache, instanciate it and pass it to the :class:`Environment`.
452 .. autoclass:: jinja2.BytecodeCache
453 :members: load_bytecode, dump_bytecode, clear
455 .. autoclass:: jinja2.bccache.Bucket
456 :members: write_bytecode, load_bytecode, bytecode_from_string,
457 bytecode_to_string, reset
459 .. attribute:: environment
461 The :class:`Environment` that created the bucket.
465 The unique cache key for this bucket
469 The bytecode if it's loaded, otherwise `None`.
472 Builtin bytecode caches:
474 .. autoclass:: jinja2.FileSystemBytecodeCache
476 .. autoclass:: jinja2.MemcachedBytecodeCache
482 These helper functions and classes are useful if you add custom filters or
483 functions to a Jinja2 environment.
485 .. autofunction:: jinja2.environmentfilter
487 .. autofunction:: jinja2.contextfilter
489 .. autofunction:: jinja2.evalcontextfilter
491 .. autofunction:: jinja2.environmentfunction
493 .. autofunction:: jinja2.contextfunction
495 .. autofunction:: jinja2.evalcontextfunction
497 .. function:: escape(s)
499 Convert the characters ``&``, ``<``, ``>``, ``'``, and ``"`` in string `s`
500 to HTML-safe sequences. Use this if you need to display text that might
501 contain such characters in HTML. This function will not escaped objects
502 that do have an HTML representation such as already escaped data.
504 The return value is a :class:`Markup` string.
506 .. autofunction:: jinja2.clear_caches
508 .. autofunction:: jinja2.is_undefined
510 .. autoclass:: jinja2.Markup([string])
511 :members: escape, unescape, striptags
515 The Jinja2 :class:`Markup` class is compatible with at least Pylons and
516 Genshi. It's expected that more template engines and framework will pick
517 up the `__html__` concept soon.
523 .. autoexception:: jinja2.TemplateError
525 .. autoexception:: jinja2.UndefinedError
527 .. autoexception:: jinja2.TemplateNotFound
529 .. autoexception:: jinja2.TemplatesNotFound
531 .. autoexception:: jinja2.TemplateSyntaxError
533 .. attribute:: message
535 The error message as utf-8 bytestring.
537 .. attribute:: lineno
539 The line number where the error occurred
543 The load name for the template as unicode string.
545 .. attribute:: filename
547 The filename that loaded the template as bytestring in the encoding
548 of the file system (most likely utf-8 or mbcs on Windows systems).
550 The reason why the filename and error message are bytestrings and not
551 unicode strings is that Python 2.x is not using unicode for exceptions
552 and tracebacks as well as the compiler. This will change with Python 3.
554 .. autoexception:: jinja2.TemplateAssertionError
562 Custom filters are just regular Python functions that take the left side of
563 the filter as first argument and the the arguments passed to the filter as
564 extra arguments or keyword arguments.
566 For example in the filter ``{{ 42|myfilter(23) }}`` the function would be
567 called with ``myfilter(42, 23)``. Here for example a simple filter that can
568 be applied to datetime objects to format them::
570 def datetimeformat(value, format='%H:%M / %d-%m-%Y'):
571 return value.strftime(format)
573 You can register it on the template environment by updating the
574 :attr:`~Environment.filters` dict on the environment::
576 environment.filters['datetimeformat'] = datetimeformat
578 Inside the template it can then be used as follows:
580 .. sourcecode:: jinja
582 written on: {{ article.pub_date|datetimeformat }}
583 publication date: {{ article.pub_date|datetimeformat('%d-%m-%Y') }}
585 Filters can also be passed the current template context or environment. This
586 is useful if a filter wants to return an undefined value or check the current
587 :attr:`~Environment.autoescape` setting. For this purpose two decorators
588 exist: :func:`environmentfilter`, :func:`contextfilter` and
589 :func:`evalcontextfilter`.
591 Here a small example filter that breaks a text into HTML line breaks and
592 paragraphs and marks the return value as safe HTML string if autoescaping is
596 from jinja2 import environmentfilter, Markup, escape
598 _paragraph_re = re.compile(r'(?:\r\n|\r|\n){2,}')
601 def nl2br(eval_ctx, value):
602 result = u'\n\n'.join(u'<p>%s</p>' % p.replace('\n', '<br>\n')
603 for p in _paragraph_re.split(escape(value)))
604 if eval_ctx.autoescape:
605 result = Markup(result)
608 Context filters work the same just that the first argument is the current
609 active :class:`Context` rather then the environment.
617 The evaluation context (short eval context or eval ctx) is a new object
618 introducted in Jinja 2.4 that makes it possible to activate and deactivate
619 compiled features at runtime.
621 Currently it is only used to enable and disable the automatic escaping but
622 can be used for extensions as well.
624 In previous Jinja versions filters and functions were marked as
625 environment callables in order to check for the autoescape status from the
626 environment. In new versions it's encouraged to check the setting from the
627 evaluation context instead.
632 def filter(env, value):
633 result = do_something(value)
635 result = Markup(result)
638 In new versions you can either use a :func:`contextfilter` and access the
639 evaluation context from the actual context, or use a
640 :func:`evalcontextfilter` which directly passes the evaluation context to
644 def filter(context, value):
645 result = do_something(value)
646 if context.eval_ctx.autoescape:
647 result = Markup(result)
651 def filter(eval_ctx, value):
652 result = do_something(value)
653 if eval_ctx.autoescape:
654 result = Markup(result)
657 The evaluation context must not be modified at runtime. Modifications
658 must only happen with a :class:`nodes.EvalContextModifier` and
659 :class:`nodes.ScopedEvalContextModifier` from an extension, not on the
660 eval context object itself.
662 .. autoclass:: jinja2.nodes.EvalContext
664 .. attribute:: autoescape
666 `True` or `False` depending on if autoescaping is active or not.
668 .. attribute:: volatile
670 `True` if the compiler cannot evaluate some expressions at compile
671 time. At runtime this should always be `False`.
679 Tests work like filters just that there is no way for a test to get access
680 to the environment or context and that they can't be chained. The return
681 value of a test should be `True` or `False`. The purpose of a test is to
682 give the template designers the possibility to perform type and conformability
685 Here a simple test that checks if a variable is a prime number::
692 for i in xrange(2, int(math.ceil(math.sqrt(n))) + 1):
698 You can register it on the template environment by updating the
699 :attr:`~Environment.tests` dict on the environment::
701 environment.tests['prime'] = is_prime
703 A template designer can then use the test like this:
705 .. sourcecode:: jinja
710 42 is not a prime number
714 .. _global-namespace:
719 Variables stored in the :attr:`Environment.globals` dict are special as they
720 are available for imported templates too, even if they are imported without
721 context. This is the place where you can put variables and functions
722 that should be available all the time. Additionally :attr:`Template.globals`
723 exist that are variables available to a specific template that are available
724 to all :meth:`~Template.render` calls.
732 The low level API exposes functionality that can be useful to understand some
733 implementation details, debugging purposes or advanced :ref:`extension
734 <jinja-extensions>` techniques. Unless you know exactly what you are doing we
735 don't recommend using any of those.
737 .. automethod:: Environment.lex
739 .. automethod:: Environment.parse
741 .. automethod:: Environment.preprocess
743 .. automethod:: Template.new_context
745 .. method:: Template.root_render_func(context)
747 This is the low level render function. It's passed a :class:`Context`
748 that has to be created by :meth:`new_context` of the same template or
749 a compatible template. This render function is generated by the
750 compiler from the template code and returns a generator that yields
753 If an exception in the template code happens the template engine will
754 not rewrite the exception but pass through the original one. As a
755 matter of fact this function should only be called from within a
756 :meth:`render` / :meth:`generate` / :meth:`stream` call.
758 .. attribute:: Template.blocks
760 A dict of block render functions. Each of these functions works exactly
761 like the :meth:`root_render_func` with the same limitations.
763 .. attribute:: Template.is_up_to_date
765 This attribute is `False` if there is a newer version of the template
766 available, otherwise `True`.
770 The low-level API is fragile. Future Jinja2 versions will try not to
771 change it in a backwards incompatible way but modifications in the Jinja2
772 core may shine through. For example if Jinja2 introduces a new AST node
773 in later versions that may be returned by :meth:`~Environment.parse`.
778 .. versionadded:: 2.2
780 The meta API returns some information about abstract syntax trees that
781 could help applications to implement more advanced template concepts. All
782 the functions of the meta API operate on an abstract syntax tree as
783 returned by the :meth:`Environment.parse` method.
785 .. autofunction:: jinja2.meta.find_undeclared_variables
787 .. autofunction:: jinja2.meta.find_referenced_templates