diff --git a/docs/templates_python.txt b/docs/templates_python.txt index 950b1223395..bc05d769ad8 100644 --- a/docs/templates_python.txt +++ b/docs/templates_python.txt @@ -763,17 +763,17 @@ will use the function's name as the tag name. Shortcut for simple tags ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -Many template tags take a single argument -- a string or a template variable -reference -- and return a string after doing some processing based solely on +Many template tags take a number of arguments -- strings or a template variables +-- and return a string after doing some processing based solely on the input argument and some external information. For example, the ``current_time`` tag we wrote above is of this variety: we give it a format string, it returns the time as a string. To ease the creation of the types of tags, Django provides a helper function, ``simple_tag``. This function, which is a method of -``django.template.Library``, takes a function that accepts one argument, wraps -it in a ``render`` function and the other necessary bits mentioned above and -registers it with the template system. +``django.template.Library``, takes a function that accepts any number of +arguments, wraps it in a ``render`` function and the other necessary bits +mentioned above and registers it with the template system. Our earlier ``current_time`` function could thus be written like this:: @@ -789,11 +789,16 @@ In Python 2.4, the decorator syntax also works:: ... A couple of things to note about the ``simple_tag`` helper function: - * Only the (single) argument is passed into our function. * Checking for the required number of arguments, etc, has already been done by the time our function is called, so we don't need to do that. * The quotes around the argument (if any) have already been stripped away, so we just receive a plain string. + * If the argument was a template variable, our function is passed the + current value of the variable, not the variable itself. + +When your template tag does not need access to the current context, writing a +function to work with the input values and using the ``simple_tag`` helper is +the easiest way to create a new tag. Inclusion tags ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~