Navigation in django

I've just done my first little webapp in django and I love it. I'm about to start on converting an old production PHP site into django and as part its template, there is a navigation bar.

In PHP, I check each nav option's URL against the current URL, in the template code and apply a CSS class if they line up. It's horrendously messy.

Is there something better for django or a good way of handling the code in the template?

To start, how would I go about getting the current URL?

You do not need an if to do that, have a look at the following code:

tags.py

@register.simple_tag
def active(request, pattern):
    import re
    if re.search(pattern, request.path):
        return 'active'
    return ''

urls.py

urlpatterns += patterns('',
    (r'/$', view_home_method, 'home_url_name'),
    (r'/services/$', view_services_method, 'services_url_name'),
    (r'/contact/$', view_contact_method, 'contact_url_name'),
)

base.html

{% load tags %}

{% url 'home_url_name' as home %}
{% url 'services_url_name' as services %}
{% url 'contact_url_name' as contact %}

<div id="navigation">
    <a class="{% active request home %}" href="{{ home }}">Home</a>
    <a class="{% active request services %}" href="{{ services }}">Services</a>
    <a class="{% active request contact %}" href="{{ contact }}">Contact</a>
</div>

that's it. for implementation details have a look at:
gnuvince.wordpress.com
110j.wordpress.com

I use template inheritance to customize navigation. For example:

base.html

<html>
    <head>...</head>
    <body>
        ...
        {% block nav %}
        <ul id="nav">
            <li>{% block nav-home %}<a href="{% url 'home' %}">Home</a>{% endblock %}</li>
            <li>{% block nav-about %}<a href="{% url 'about' %}">About</a>{% endblock %}</li>
            <li>{% block nav-contact %}<a href="{% url 'contact' %}">Contact</a>{% endblock %}</li>
        </ul>
        {% endblock %}
        ...
    </body>
</html>

about.html

{% extends "base.html" %}

{% block nav-about %}<strong class="nav-active">About</strong>{% endblock %}

I liked the cleanness of 110j above so I took most of it and refactored to solve the 3 problems I had with it:

the regular expression was matching the 'home' url against all others
I needed multiple URLs mapped to one navigation tab, so I needed a more complex tag that takes variable amount of parameters
fixed some url problems

Here it is:

tags.py:

from django import template

register = template.Library()

@register.tag
def active(parser, token):
    args = token.split_contents()
    template_tag = args[0]
    if len(args) < 2:
        raise template.TemplateSyntaxError, "%r tag requires at least one argument" % template_tag
    return NavSelectedNode(args[1:])

class NavSelectedNode(template.Node):
    def __init__(self, patterns):
        self.patterns = patterns
    def render(self, context):
        path = context['request'].path
        for p in self.patterns:
            pValue = template.Variable(p).resolve(context)
            if path == pValue:
                return "active" # change this if needed for other bootstrap version (compatible with 3.2)
        return ""

urls.py:

urlpatterns += patterns('',
    url(r'/$', view_home_method, {}, name='home_url_name'),
    url(r'/services/$', view_services_method, {}, name='services_url_name'),
    url(r'/contact/$', view_contact_method, {}, name='contact_url_name'),
    url(r'/contact/$', view_contact2_method, {}, name='contact2_url_name'),
)

base.html:

{% load tags %}

{% url home_url_name as home %}
{% url services_url_name as services %}
{% url contact_url_name as contact %}
{% url contact2_url_name as contact2 %}

<div id="navigation">
    <a class="{% active request home %}" href="home">Home</a>
    <a class="{% active request services %}" href="services">Services</a>
    <a class="{% active request contact contact2 %}" href="contact">Contact</a>
</div>

Navigation in django

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