Why I can't print the session variable in this Django example application?

Question

I am following this Mozzilla's articles related about how to build a Django application and I am finding the following problem related to session, this is the specific article: https://developer.mozilla.org/it/docs/Learn/Server-side/Django/Sessions

Into my Django portal I have:

1. I have enabled sessions into locallibrary/locallibrary/settings.py file, infact I have set:

   INSTALLED_APPS = [ 'django.contrib.admin', 'django.contrib.auth', 'django.contrib.contenttypes', 'django.contrib.sessions', 'django.contrib.messages', 'django.contrib.staticfiles', 'catalog.apps.CatalogConfig', ]

   MIDDLEWARE = [ 'django.middleware.security.SecurityMiddleware', 'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware', 'django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware', 'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware', 'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware', 'django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware', 'django.middleware.clickjacking.XFrameOptionsMiddleware', ]

Then this is my index view function code defined into the view.py file:

def index(request):
    """View function for home page of site."""

    # Generate counts of some of the main objects
    num_books = Book.objects.all().count()
    num_instances = BookInstance.objects.all().count()

    # Available books (status = 'a')
    num_instances_available = BookInstance.objects.filter(status__exact='a').count()

    # The 'all()' is implied by default.
    num_authors = Author.objects.count()

    # Number of visits to this view, as counted in the session variable.
    num_visits = request.session.get('num_visits', 0)
    request.session['num_visits'] = num_visits + 1

    context = {
        'num_books': num_books,
        'num_instances': num_instances,
        'num_instances_available': num_instances_available,
        'num_authors': num_authors,
    }

    # Render the HTML template index.html with the data in the context variable
    return render(request, 'index.html', context=context)

As you ca see I defined these linese related to session:

# Number of visits to this view, as counted in the session variable.
num_visits = request.session.get('num_visits', 0)
request.session['num_visits'] = num_visits + 1

So i am putting into the the returned request the session variable named num_visits

Finally this is the HTML template related this view (named **index.html):

{% extends "base_generic.html" %}

{% block content %}
  <h1>Local Library Home</h1>
  <p>Welcome to LocalLibrary, a website developed by <em>Mozilla Developer Network</em>!</p>

  <h2>UML Models</h2>
  <p>An UML diagram of the site's Django model structure is shown below. </p>
  

  <h2>Dynamic content</h2>
  <p>The library has the following record counts:</p>
  <ul>
    <li><strong>Books:</strong> {{ num_books }}</li>
    <li><strong>Copies:</strong> {{ num_instances }}</li>
    <li><strong>Copies available:</strong> {{ num_instances_available }}</li>
    <li><strong>Authors:</strong> {{ num_authors }}</li>
  </ul>

  <p>You have visited this page {{ num_visits }}{% if num_visits == 1 %} time{% else %} times{% endif %}.</p>
{% endblock %}

as you can see I added this line:

<p>You have visited this page {{ num_visits }}{% if num_visits == 1 %} time{% else %} times{% endif %}.</p>

that should show the num_visits variable value in my session.

The problem is that this is what is rendered:

So as you can see it is not showing the value of my num_visits variable. But it seems that it is using the value to print times instead time

Why? What is wrong? What am I missing? How can I fix this issue?

Answer 1

Enrich context with num_visits:

    context = {
        'num_books': num_books,
        'num_instances': num_instances,
        'num_instances_available': num_instances_available,
        'num_authors': num_authors,
        'num_visits': num_visits,
    }