How to create a list of items from a string in a Django template ?

Example of how to split a string in a Django template

Introduction

Let's consider the following example: with a table in models.py file with a row called tags (which is a string: models.TextField() ):

class Note(models.Model):
    ... = ...   
     ... = ...  
     ... = ...  
    tags = models.TextField()

and tags is used to store labels separated by a semicolon ; (i.e. for example: New_York; Travel; Photo).

The goal is to split the string tags in a django template.

Create a filter

Django application directories should look like:

/my_app/
    /templates/
    /static/
    models.py
    views.py

under my_app (replace my_app by the name of your application), create a folder named templatetags:

mkdir templatetags

/my_app/
    /templates/
    /static/
    models.py
    views.py
    /templatetags/

Under templatetags create a empty file called

__init__.py

and a file called filter.py

from django import template

register = template.Library()

@register.filter(name='split')
def split(value, key):
  """
    Returns the value turned into a list.
  """
  return value.split(key)

Update settings.py

Add the following lines in the settings.py file (replace my_app):

'libraries':{
   # make your file entry here.
   'filter_tags': 'my_app.templatetags.filter',
}

Should look like this:

TEMPLATES = [
    {
        'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',
        'DIRS': [],
        'APP_DIRS': True,
        'OPTIONS': {
            'context_processors': [
                'django.template.context_processors.debug',
                'django.template.context_processors.request',
                'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
                'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',     
            ],
            'libraries':{
               # make your file entry here.
               'filter_tags': 'my_app.templatetags.filter',
            }
        },
    },
]

Pass table note to the template

from .models import Note

def images_view(request):
    ...
    ...
    ...
    note_obj = Note.objects.all()
    context = {'note_obj':note_obj}
    return render(request, "my_app/template.html", context )

Create a list in the template

In template.html add the following line at the top:

{% load filter_tags %}

now the filter can be used to split the string note_obj,tags

{% with note_obj.tags|split:";" as tags %}
    {% for tag in tags %}
        {{tag}}
    {% endfor %}
{% endwith %}

References