Content type of default error pages should be always "text/html"

[lvella]

I have in my settings.py:

DEFAULT_CONTENT_TYPE = 'application/xhtml+xml'

And every view defined in the project conforms to the that. For instance, I have defined a custom 404 error page, and there is no issue, because I wrote it as valid XHTML.

The problem is that the default error pages that comes in Django are, too, being served with the content type I choose in my settings. The simple default error 500 page content "<h1>Server Error (500)</h1>" is being server as XHTML, what is obviously wrong and fails to render in the browsers.

Default error pages should use specific content type for what it its, in this case, text/html, for the case the default content type has been overridden.

[Tim Graham]

This should be fairly easy change in django.views.defaults with tests in django.tests.view_tests.test_defaults.

[jimmysong]

Topic branch is at: ​https://github.com/jimmysong-work/django/tree/ticket_20822

Tests pass under linux.

[jimmysong]

BTW, this is my first contribution to an open-source project so please be gentle.

[Aymeric Augustin]

Hi Jimmy, thanks for your contribution, this is an very good start.

A small point about our process: when you upload a patch, you aren't supposed to flip the "Ready for Checkin" flag yourself. We ask that another person review the patch. This "two sets of eyes" rule provides better guarantees on the quality of patches marked as RFC.

Regarding the patch itself, HttpResponse subclasses accept a content_type keyword argument. You don't need to create a temporary response, you can just create the response with the appropriate content-type and return it in one line.

Does the test fail when you run it without the code changes? Given that DEFAULT_CONTENT_TYPE = "text/html" by default I suspect it doesn't. I propose to decorate it with @override_settings(DEFAULT_CONTENT_TYPE="text/xml"), then it should fail without the code changes and pass with them.

[jimmysong]

I've made the changes as requested by aaugustin. Please let me know if there's anything else I should fix to make this patch go through.

[Aymeric Augustin]

Looks good (as far as code review on a mobile phone goes)!

I'll merge it.

[Aymeric Augustin <aymeric.augustin@…>]

In 784377544e01322b0d09e5cf4e8f6dda159df854:

Fixed #20822 -- Set content type of default error pages to 'text/html'.

Thanks Jimmy Song for the patch.

[Aymeric Augustin <aymeric.augustin@…>]

In 2eac9899856d0e19c8e2df02256f2e8c4bdb5344:

[1.6.x] Fixed #20822 -- Set content type of default error pages to 'text/html'.

Thanks Jimmy Song for the patch.

Backport of 7843775 from master.