Loading Templates¶
Genshi comes with a simple but flexible implementation of a template loader in
the genshi.template.loader
module. The loader provides caching of
templates so they do not need to be reparsed when used, support for multiple
template directories that together form a virtual search path, as well as
support for different template loading strategies.
Usage¶
The basic usage pattern is simple: instantiate one TemplateLoader
object
and keep it around, then ask it to load a template whenever you need to load
one:
from genshi.template import TemplateLoader
loader = TemplateLoader(['/path/to/dir1', '/path/to/dir2'],
auto_reload=True)
tmpl = loader.load('test.html')
When you try to load a template that can’t be found, you get a
TemplateNotFound
error.
The default template class used by the loader is MarkupTemplate
, but that
can be overridden both with a different default (as a keyword argument to the
TemplateLoader
constructor), as well as on invocation of the load()
method:
from genshi.template.text import NewTextTemplate
tmpl = loader.load('mail.txt', cls=NewTextTemplate)
Caching¶
The TemplateLoader
class provides a simple in-memory cache for parsed
template objects. This improves performance, because templates do not need to
be reparsed every time they are rendered.
The size of this cache can be adjusted using the max_cache_size option on
the TemplateLoader
constructor. The value of that option determines the
maximum number of template objects kept in the cache. When this limit is
reached, any templates that haven’t been used in a while get purged.
Technically, this is a least-recently-used (LRU) cache, the default limit is
set to 25 templates.
Automatic Reloading¶
Once a template has been cached, it will normally not get reparsed until it
has been purged from the cache. This means that any changes to the template
file are not taken into consideration as long as it is still found in the
cache. As this is inconvenient in development scenarios, the auto_reload
option allows for automatic cache invalidation based on whether the template
source has changed.
from genshi.template import TemplateLoader
loader = TemplateLoader('templates', auto_reload=True, max_cache_size=100)
In production environments, automatic reloading should be disabled, as it does affect performance negatively.
Callback Interface¶
Sometimes you need to make sure that templates get properly configured after they have been loaded, but you only want to do that when the template is actually loaded and parsed, not when it is returned from the cache.
For such cases, the TemplateLoader
provides a way to specify a callback
function that gets invoked whenever a template is loaded. You can specify that
callback by passing it into the loader constructor via the callback
keyword argument, or later by setting the attribute of the same name. The
callback function should expect a single argument, the template object.
For example, to properly inject the translation filter into any loaded template, you’d use code similar to this:
from genshi.filters import Translator
from genshi.template import TemplateLoader
def template_loaded(template):
Translator(translations.ugettext).setup(template)
loader = TemplateLoader('templates', callback=template_loaded)
Template Search Path¶
The template loader can be configured with a list of multiple directories to search for templates. The loader maps these directories to a single logical directory for locating templates by file name.
The order of the directories making up the search path is significant: the loader will first try to locate a requested template in the first directory on the path, then in the second, and so on. If there are two templates with the same file name in multiple directories on the search path, whatever file is found first gets used.
Based on this design, an application could, for example, configure a search path consisting of a directory containing the default templates, as well as a directory where site-specific templates can be stored that will override the default templates.
Load Functions¶
Usually the search path consists of strings representing directory paths, but it may also contain “load functions”: functions that are basically invoked with the file name, and return the template content.
Genshi comes with three builtin load functions:
directory(path)
¶
The equivalent of just using a string containing the directory path: looks up the file name in a specific directory.
from genshi.template import TemplateLoader, loader
tl = TemplateLoader([loader.directory('/path/to/dir/')])
That is the same as:
tl = TemplateLoader(['/path/to/dir/'])
package(name, path)
¶
Uses the pkg_resources
API to locate files in Python package data (which
may be inside a ZIP archive).
from genshi.template import TemplateLoader, loader
tl = TemplateLoader([loader.package('myapp', 'templates')])
This will look for templates in the templates
directory of the Python
package myapp
.
prefixed(**delegates)
¶
Delegates load requests to different load functions based on the path prefix.
from genshi.template import TemplateLoader, loader
tl = TemplateLoader(loader.prefixed(
core = '/tmp/dir1',
plugin1 = loader.package('plugin1', 'templates'),
plugin2 = loader.package('plugin2', 'templates'),
))
tmpl = tl.load('core/index.html')
This example sets up a loader with three delegates, under the prefixes “core”,
“plugin1”, and “plugin2”. When a template is requested, the prefixed
load
function looks for a delegate with a corresponding prefix, removes the prefix
from the path and asks the delegate to load the template.
In this case, assuming the directory /path/to/dir
contains a file named
index.html
, that file will be used when we load core/index.html
. The
other delegates are not checked as their prefix does not match.
Note
These builtin load functions are available both as class methods
of the TemplateLoader
class as well as on the module level
Custom Load Functions¶
You can easily use your own load function with the template loader, for
example to load templates from a database. All that is needed is a callable
object that accepts a filename
(a string) and returns a tuple of the form
(filepath, filename, fileobj, uptodate_fun)
, where:
filepath
- is the absolute path to the template. This is primarily used for output in tracebacks, and does not need to map to an actual path on the file system.
filename
- is the base name of the template file
fileobj
- is a readable file-like object that provides the content of the template
uptodate_fun
- is a function that the loader can invoke to check whether the cached version
of the template is still up-to-date, or
None
if the load function is not able to provide such a check. If provided, the function should not expect any parameters (so you’ll definitely want to use a closure here), and should returnTrue
if the template has not changed since it was last loaded.
When the requested template can not be found, the function should raise an
IOError
or TemplateNotFound
exception.
Customized Loading¶
If you require a completely different implementation of template loading, you
can extend or even replace the builtin TemplateLoader
class.
Protocol¶
The protocol between the template loader and the Template
class is simple
and only used for processing includes. The only required part of that protocol
is that the object assigned to Template.loader
implements a load
method compatible to that of the TemplateLoader
class, at the minimum with
the signature load(filename, relative_to=None, cls=None)
.
In addition, templates currently check for the existence and value of a boolean
auto_reload
property. If the property does not exist or evaluates to a
non-truth value, inlining of included templates is disabled. Inlining is a
small optimization that removes some overhead in the processing of includes.
Subclassing TemplateLoader
¶
You can also adjust the behavior of the TemplateLoader
class by subclassing
it. You can of course override anything needed, but the class also provides the
_instantiate()
hook, which is intended for use by subclasses to customize
the creation of the template object from the file name and content. Please
consult the code and the API documentation for more detail.