Django Mixin to add context variables

Question

I want to create a GenericFormMixin for Django that I can mix into CreateView and UpdateView that will let me use a generic form template by dynamically setting things like the page title, form title, submit button text, etc.

I have the following in mixins.py:

class GenericFormMixin(object):
    page_title = ''
    form_title = ''
    submit_button_text = ''

Instead of having to create a modelname_create.html and modelname_update.html for every CreateView or UpdateView I have, I want to be able to use generic_form.html which will use the mixin's variables in its context to dynamically create an appropriately populated template:

{% extends "base.html" %}

{% block title %}{{ page_title }}{% endblock title %}

{% block content %}

  <div class="panel panel-primary">
    <div class="panel-heading">{{ form_title }}</div>
    <div class="panel-body">
      <form method="post" action=".">
          {{ form }}
          {% csrf_token %}
          <button type="submit" class="btn btn-primary">{{ submit_button_text }}</button>
      </form>
    </div>
  </div>

{% endblock content %}

My question is: now that I've created the mixin, how do I get the variables into the template context of CreateView and UpdateView?

Answer 1

Define get_context_data in your mixin. It should call the superclass method, add its elements to the dictionary returned from there, and then return the dict.