FAQ

Some frequently requested questions/examples. All examples assume you import django-tables2 like this:

import django_tables2 as tables

How should I fix error messages about the request context processor?

The error message looks something like this:

Tag {% querystring %} requires django.template.context_processors.request to be
in the template configuration in settings.TEMPLATES[]OPTIONS.context_processors)
in order for the included template tags to function correctly.

which should be pretty clear, but here is an example template configuration anyway:

TEMPLATES = [
    {
        "BACKEND": "django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates",
        "DIRS": ["templates"],
        "APP_DIRS": True,
        "OPTIONS": {
            "context_processors": [
                "django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth",
                "django.template.context_processors.request",
                "django.template.context_processors.static",
            ],
        }
    }
]

How to create a row counter?

You can use itertools.counter to add row count to a table. Note that in a paginated table, every page’s counter will start at zero:

class CountryTable(tables.Table):
    counter = tables.TemplateColumn("{{ row_counter }}")

How to add a footer containing a column total?

Using the footer-argument to Column:

class CountryTable(tables.Table):
    population = tables.Column(
        footer=lambda table: sum(x["population"] for x in table.data)
    )

Or by creating a custom column:

class SummingColumn(tables.Column):
    def render_footer(self, bound_column, table):
        return sum(bound_column.accessor.resolve(row) for row in table.data)

class Table(tables.Table):
    name = tables.Column(footer="Total:")
    population = SummingColumn()

Documentation: Adding column footers

Note

Your table template must include a block rendering the table footer!

Can I use inheritance to build Tables that share features?

Yes, like this:

class CountryTable(tables.Table):
    name = tables.Column()
    language = tables.Column()

A CountryTable will show columns name and language:

class TouristCountryTable(CountryTable):
    tourist_info = tables.Column()

A TouristCountryTable will show columns name, language and tourist_info.

Overwriting a Column attribute from the base class with anything that is not a Column will result in removing that Column from the Table. For example:

class SimpleCountryTable(CountryTable):
    language = None

A SimpleCountryTable will only show column name.

How can I use with Jinja2 template?

In Jinja2 templates, the {% render_table %} tag is not available, but you can still use django-tables2 like this:

{{ table.as_html(request) }}

where request need to be passed from view, or from context processors (which is supported by django-jinja).