Custom template filters in Django - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Creating Custom Template Filters in Django

📖 Scenario: You are building a Django web app that shows a list of product prices. You want to display prices formatted as currency with a dollar sign and two decimals.

🎯 Goal: Create a custom Django template filter called currency that formats a number as US dollars (e.g., 12.5 becomes "$12.50") and use it in a template to display product prices.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a Python dictionary called products with these entries: 'apple': 0.5, 'banana': 0.3, 'cherry': 1.2

Create a variable called currency_symbol and set it to '$'

Write a custom template filter function called currency that takes a number and returns a string formatted as currency_symbol plus the number with two decimals

Use the currency filter in a Django template to display each product's price formatted as currency

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Custom template filters help format data in Django templates to improve user experience, such as showing prices in a readable currency format.

💼 Career

Knowing how to create and use custom template filters is important for Django developers to customize how data is displayed in web applications.

1

Set up the product prices dictionary

Create a Python dictionary called products with these exact entries: 'apple': 0.5, 'banana': 0.3, and 'cherry': 1.2.

Django

# Create the products dictionary with exact entries
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use curly braces {} to create a dictionary with keys and values separated by colons.

2

Add a currency symbol variable

Create a variable called currency_symbol and set it to the string '$'.

Django

products = {'apple': 0.5, 'banana': 0.3, 'cherry': 1.2}
# Create currency_symbol variable
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Assign the string '$' to the variable currency_symbol.

3

Write the custom template filter function

Write a function called currency that takes one argument value. It should return a string combining currency_symbol and value formatted with two decimal places (e.g., "$12.50").

Django

products = {'apple': 0.5, 'banana': 0.3, 'cherry': 1.2}
currency_symbol = '$'
# Define currency filter function
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use an f-string to format the number with two decimals and add the currency symbol in front.

4

Use the custom filter in a Django template

In a Django template, use a for loop with variables product and price to iterate over products.items(). Inside the loop, display the product name and the price using the currency filter like this: {{ price|currency }}.

Django

{% for product, price in products.items() %}
  
  
{% endfor %}

Need a hint?

Use Django template syntax with {% for %} and {{ }} to loop and display filtered prices.