Using Context processor in Django to create dynamic footer

Intro to Context Processor

Hi all,

We can all agree that we have come across request.user in a django project. Have you ever wondered what it was ? Well, its an inbuilt context processor.

A context processor is a function that accepts an argument and returns a dictionary as its output. In our case, the returning dictionary is added as the context and the biggest advantage is that, it can be accessed globally i.e, across all templates. While this might seem too complex or hard to achieve, its actually not the case and it is very simple to implement.

So, today we will look into building a dynamic footer using the context processor - a footer which can render the year dynamically, pretty convenient, when you dont have to change your source code every year. I'm assuming you have a django project and an app already built.

Building a dynamic footer using context processor

First, you need to create a file named context_processors.py. Here we will add the following code.

import datetime

def get_current_year_to_context(request):
    current_datetime = datetime.datetime.now()
    return {
        'current_year': current_datetime.year
    }

Second, you need to specify your context processor in your settings file.

TEMPLATES = [
    {
        'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',
        'DIRS': [os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'templates')],
        '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',
                'myapp.context_processors.get_current_year_to_context', # <-- Add your context processor
            ],
        },
    },
]

Thats it. Your context processor is now ready to be used in your templates and it can be accessed using the key that we specified 'current_year'. So, to create a dynamic footer section, all i need to do is.

    Copyright {{ current_year }} - Heinek Halwin

Run your project and you can see that the year is now visible as the current year. Have fun using this in your projects.

Have a great day !