Create reusable templates

Templates tend to have common sections that are equally used across multiple instances. For example, the header and footer sections on all templates rarely changes, whether a project has five or one hundred templates. Other template sections like menus and advertisements, also fall into this category of content that's constant across multiple templates. All of this can lead to repetition over multiple templates, which can be avoided by creating reusable templates.

With reusable Django templates you can define common sections on separate templates and reuse them inside other templates. This process makes it easy to create and manage a project's templates because a single template update takes effect on all templates.

Reusable Django templates also allow you to define page blocks to override content on a page by page basis. This process makes a project's templates more modular because you define top level blocks to establish the overall layout and define content on a page by page basis.

Lets take the first step toward building reusable Django templates exploring the Django built-in {% block %} tag. Listing 3-10 illustrates the first lines of a template called base.html with several {% block %} tags.

Listing 3-10. Django template with {% block %} tags

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <title>{% block title%}Default title{% endblock title %}</title>
    <meta name="description" content="{% block metadescription%}{% endblock metadescription %}">
    <meta name="keywords" content="{% block metakeywords%}{% endblock metakeywords %}">

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