I'm using Pyramid and Mako for templating.
It is possible to define a (semi-anonymous) function within a Mako block <% and %>.
I know it can be done with a module-level block <%! and %>, but this means my function doesn't have any access to the local scope when templating, meaning I have to pass every bit of variable in that I need.
Example:
...template...
<%
variable_in_local_scope = 'blah blah blah'
def my_function():
header_name = variable_in_local_scope.upper()
return header_name
%>
${foo()}
This will throw a NameError saying header_name is not defined. The only way around this has been to code it like
<%!
def my_function(input_variable):
return input_variable.upper()
%>
${my_function(variable_in_local_scope)}
This works, but when there are more than a few variables for the function, it gets quite unweildy. I must also re-import any 'helper' functions available to my template in the module-level-block.
Is there any way around this, or am I doing something completely stupid?
Add a dictionary in your context using:
template.render(local_vars={})
and then use it in your functions.
Note: Mako is too fast, because the engine will create a python module for each *.mak(template file) before render it, you may try this:
from mako.template import Template
mytemplate = Template(filename='/docs/mytmpl.txt', module_directory='/tmp/mako_modules')
print mytemplate.render()
and check content of *.py files in '/tmp/mako_modules'