Possible regression of Engine.get_template

[Henrik Ossipoff Hansen]

While trying to upgrade to Django 6.0 locally today, we noticed an issue with one of our third party packages, adminsortable2.

For their admin templates, they use Path objects: ​https://github.com/jrief/django-admin-sortable2/blob/master/adminsortable2/admin.py#L124

This has worked until this commit ​https://github.com/django/django/commit/5e06b970956af4854e970e74990cb971ba31c96b where get_template was refactored to support Template Partials.

As a by-product, template names now have to be strings.

I don't see that it was ever mentioned/officially supported, to use Path objects for templates, but I would suspect that several third party libraries does this, and I would therefore see this as a regression.

If this is deemed not to be the case, I'll create an issue on their Github to change the behaviour.

[Henrik Ossipoff Hansen]

TypeError at /admin/terminals/terminal/
sequence item 0: expected str instance, PosixPath found
Request Method:	GET
Request URL:	http://localhost:8000/admin/terminals/terminal/
Django Version:	6.0
Exception Type:	TypeError
Exception Value:	
sequence item 0: expected str instance, PosixPath found
Exception Location:	/usr/local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/django/template/loader.py, line 47, in select_template
Raised during:	adminsortable2.admin.changelist_view
Python Executable:	/usr/local/bin/python
Python Version:	3.14.2
Python Path:	
['/code',
 '/code',
 '/usr/local/lib/python314.zip',
 '/usr/local/lib/python3.14',
 '/usr/local/lib/python3.14/lib-dynload',
 '/usr/local/lib/python3.14/site-packages']
Server time:	Mon, 22 Dec 2025 08:54:07 +0000
Traceback Switch to copy-and-paste view
/usr/local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/django/core/handlers/exception.py, line 55, in inner
                response = get_response(request)
                               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ …
Local vars
/usr/local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/django/core/handlers/base.py, line 221, in _get_response
                response = response.render()
                                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ …
Local vars
/usr/local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/django/template/response.py, line 114, in render
            self.content = self.rendered_content
                                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ …
Local vars
/usr/local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/django/template/response.py, line 90, in rendered_content
        template = self.resolve_template(self.template_name)
                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ …
Local vars
/usr/local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/django/template/response.py, line 72, in resolve_template
            return select_template(template, using=self.using)
                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ …
Local vars
/usr/local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/django/template/loader.py, line 47, in select_template
        raise TemplateDoesNotExist(", ".join(template_name_list), chain=chain)
                                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ …
Local vars

[Carlton Gibson]

Yes… OK. The DTL loader always expected strings, but they're always meant to be paths, so Path objects seem a reasonable thing to allow.

Checking if template_name is a Path and converting back to a string in get_template() should be acceptable.

Want to make a PR Henrik?

[Henrik Ossipoff Hansen]

Can see Varun assigned themselves, so I'll let them handle it - if not I'll gladly make quick-fix.

[Varun Kasyap Pentamaraju]

Thanks Henrik,

Created Patch: ​https://github.com/django/django/pull/20442

[Jacob Walls]

Thanks, but this was wontfixed in #36817. The provided patch doesn't account for the jinja2 loader, for example, so we shouldn't suggest this is supported.

For their admin templates, they use Path objects:

Are you sure you haven't updated to a more recent version of that package? The source you linked to shows this was already fixed there.

[Carlton Gibson]

Yep, I'd forgotten about that one. Thanks, Jacob.