Django documentation

The flatpages app

These docs are frozen for Django version 0.91. For current documentation, go here.

Django comes with an optional "flatpages" application. It lets you store simple "flat" HTML content in a database and handles the management for you.

A flatpage is a simple object with a URL, title and content. Use it for one-off, special-case pages, such as "About" or "Privacy Policy" pages, that you want to store in a database but for which you don't want to develop a custom Django application.

A flatpage can use a custom template or a default, systemwide flatpage template. It can be associated with one, or multiple, sites.

Here are some examples of flatpages on Django-powered sites:

Installation

To install the flatpages app, follow these steps:

  1. Add "django.contrib.flatpages" to your INSTALLED_APPS setting.
  2. Add "django.contrib.flatpages.middleware.FlatpageFallbackMiddleware" to your MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES setting.
  3. Run the command django-admin.py install flatpages.

How it works

django-admin.py install flatpages creates two tables in your database: django_flatpages and django_flatpages_sites. django_flatpages is a simple lookup table that essentially maps a URL to a title and bunch of text content. django_flatpages_sites associates a flatpage with a site.

The FlatpageFallbackMiddleware does all of the work. Each time any Django application raises a 404 error, this middleware checks the flatpages database for the requested URL as a last resort. Specifically, it checks for a flatpage with the given URL with a site ID that corresponds to the SITE_ID setting.

If it finds a match, it follows this algorithm:

  • If the flatpage has a custom template, it loads that template. Otherwise, it loads the template flatpages/default.
  • It passes that template a single context variable, flatpage, which is the flatpage object. It uses DjangoContext in rendering the template.

If it doesn't find a match, the request continues to be processed as usual.

The middleware only gets activated for 404s -- not for 500s or responses of any other status code.

Note that the order of MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES matters. Generally, you can put FlatpageFallbackMiddleware at the end of the list, because it's a last resort.

For more on middleware, read the middleware docs.

How to add, change and delete flatpages

Via the admin interface

If you've activated the automatic Django admin interface, you should see a "Flatpages" section on the admin index page. Edit flatpages as you edit any other object in the system.

Via the Python API

Flatpages are represented by a standard Django model, which lives in django/contrib/flatpages/models/flatpages.py. You can access flatpage objects via the Django database API.

Flatpage templates

By default, flatpages are rendered via the template flatpages/default, but you can override that for a particular flatpage.

Creating the flatpages/default template is your responsibility; in your template directory, just create a flatpages directory containing a file default.html.

Flatpage templates are passed a single context variable, flatpage, which is the flatpage object.

Here's a sample flatpages/default template:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>{{ flatpage.title }}</title>
</head>
<body>
{{ flatpage.content }}
</body>
</html>

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