Version 6 (modified by anonymous, 18 years ago) ( diff )

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AutoEscaping Alternative

The current AutoEscaping proposal has met arguments on several fronts:

  • Too magic
  • Too implicit
  • HTML escaping only

This alternative proposal attempts to provide a concise solution that answers these arguments:

Suggested Solution

Escaping only matters for VariableNodes ({{ object.name }} tags). A filter is usually applied to each of these nodes. The straight-forward solution is to provide a block tag which can automatically add filters (for html escaping, |escape) to any variable tag defined within the block.

The solution is to provide a {% finalfilter %} block tag.

If a tag has already been "finalized" in the view (ie. it doesn't need the filters added to it), a specific new filter |finalized can be added to that variable tag.

To avoid unwanted double escaping, if a tag explictly already uses a filter declared in finalfilter, it will not be added again.

Not too magic

There is no magical code hidden underneath deciding on what should be escaped. All that's happening is one or more common filters are being applied automatically to every variable tag defined within the finalfilter block.

Not too implicit

The template author has to use finalfilter explicitly. It does work across {% extend %}ed pages however, but some amount of implicitness is required for this to be a useful tag.

Not just HTML escaping

Any filter can be used with the finalfilter tag.

Example

base.html: 

{% load filtertags %}
{% finalfilter escape %}
<head>
<title>Test Escaping</title>
</head>

<body>
<div id="content">
{% block content %}{% endblock %}
</div>
</body>
</html>
{% endfinalfilter %}

index.html: 

{% extends "base.htm" %}

{% block content %}
<h1>{% object.title %}</h1>
<p>{% object.details %}</p>
{% endblock %}

edit.html: 

{% extends "base.html" %}

{% block content %}
<h1>Edit {% object.title %}</h1>
{% load filtertags %}
{% finalfilter finalized %}
<p><label for="id_title">Title</label> {{ form.title }}</p>
<p><label for="id_details">Details</label> {{ form.details }}</p>
{% endfinalfilter %}
{% endblock %}

One gotcha to be aware of: if you set {% finalfilter escape %} in a base template and then want to use the finalized filter in a template that extends it, you must {% load filtertags %} in the template or finalized won't be found. This is exactly how things should work (see ​here), but since the finalfilter tag spans included templates, it may not be immediately obvious.

Try It Out

Basic instructions for using the file below:

  1. Create a templatetags directory inside of an app listed in the INSTALLED_APPS of your settings.py
  2. Make a blank file __init__.py (that's two underscores before and after) in the templatetags folder
  3. Copy the filtertags.py file into that folder (rename the latest file listed below to that)

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