Django - non-consecutive months

Question

I would like to produce a list on the side of my blog that shows the year and the months that have entries only, like this:

2011 - Jan, Feb
2010 - Jan, Mar, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Oct, Nov, Dec
2009 - Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec

I have made custom template tag so that I can place it into the base.html.

Currently it produces a list that looks like this:

2011 - 1, 2
2010 - 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12
2009 - 9, 10, 11, 12

I have built a custom template tag that is(thanks to Alasdair and cig212):

from django import template
from blog.models import Post

register = template.Library()

class PostList(template.Node):
def __init__(self, var_name):
    self.var_name = var_name

def render(self, context):
    my_months = ['Jan', 'Feb', 'Mar', 'Apr', 'May', 'Jun', 
       'Jul', 'Aug', 'Sept', 'Oct', 'Nov', 'Dec']

       arch = Post.objects.dates('publish', 'month', order='DESC')

       archives = {}
       for i in arch:
         year = i.year
         month = i.month
         if year not in archives: 
             archives[year] = [] 
             archives[year].append(month) 
         else: 
             if month not in archives[year]: 
                 archives[year].append(month)

    context[self.var_name] = archives.items()
    return ''


@register.tag
def get_post_list(parser, token):
    """
    Generates a list of months that blog posts exist.
    Much like the 'year' archive.

    Syntax::

      {% get_post_list as [var_name] %}

    Example usage::

      {% get_post_list as posts_list %}
      (This 'var_name' is the one inserted into the Node)

    """
    try:
       tag_name, arg = token.contents.split(None, 1)
    except ValueError:
       raise template.TemplateSyntaxError, "%s tag requires arguments" % token.contents.split()[0]
    m = re.search(r'as (\w+)', arg)
    if not m:
        raise template.TemplateSyntaxError, "%s tag had invalid arguments" % tag_name
    var_name = m.groups()[0]
    return PostListNode(var_name)

The template looks like so:

{% load blog %}
{% get_post_list as posts_list %}
{% for years, months in posts_list %} 
    {{ years }} 
    {% for month in months %} 
    <a href="{{ years }}/{{ month }}">{{ month }}</a> 
    {% endfor %} 
    <br /> 
{% endfor %}

So how can I get my my_months labels that are in the custom tag on to the month numbers produced by the tag. I know that I need to use enumerate() in the custom tag but I am getting lost somewhere.

Answer 1

Change

 if year not in archives: 
     archives[year] = [] 
     archives[year].append(month) 
 else: 
     if month not in archives[year]: 
         archives[year].append(month)

to

 if year not in archives: 
     archives[year] = {} 
     archives[year][month] = my_months[month - 1]
 else: 
     if month not in archives[year]: 
         archives[year][month] = my_months[month - 1]

and then

{% for years, months in posts_list %} 
    {{ years }} 
    {% for month in months %} 
    <a href="{{ years }}/{{ month }}">{{ month }}</a> 
    {% endfor %} 
    <br /> 
{% endfor %}

to

{% for years, months in posts_list %} 
    {{ years }} 
    {% for month_number, month_name in months.items %} 
    <a href="{{ years }}/{{ month_number }}">{{ month_name }}</a> 
    {% endfor %} 
    <br /> 
{% endfor %}

This should do what you need.