Renderers

A view callable needn’t always return a Response object. If a view happens to return something which does not implement the Pyramid Response interface, Pyramid will attempt to use a renderer to construct a response. For example:

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from pyramid.view import view_config

@view_config(renderer='json')
def hello_world(request):
    return {'content':'Hello!'}

The above example returns a dictionary from the view callable. A dictionary does not implement the Pyramid response interface, so you might believe that this example would fail. However, since a renderer is associated with the view callable through its view configuration (in this case, using a renderer argument passed to view_config()), if the view does not return a Response object, the renderer will attempt to convert the result of the view to a response on the developer’s behalf.

Of course, if no renderer is associated with a view’s configuration, returning anything except an object which implements the Response interface will result in an error. And, if a renderer is used, whatever is returned by the view must be compatible with the particular kind of renderer used, or an error may occur during view invocation.

One exception exists: it is always OK to return a Response object, even when a renderer is configured. If a view callable returns a response object from a view that is configured with a renderer, the renderer is bypassed entirely.

Various types of renderers exist, including serialization renderers and renderers which use templating systems. See also Writing View Callables Which Use a Renderer.

Writing View Callables Which Use a Renderer

As we’ve seen, view callables needn’t always return a Response object. Instead, they may return an arbitrary Python object, with the expectation that a renderer will convert that object into a response instance on your behalf. Some renderers use a templating system; other renderers use object serialization techniques.

View configuration can vary the renderer associated with a view callable via the renderer attribute. For example, this call to add_view() associates the json renderer with a view callable:

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config.add_view('myproject.views.my_view', renderer='json')

When this configuration is added to an application, the myproject.views.my_view view callable will now use a json renderer, which renders view return values to a JSON response serialization.

Other built-in renderers include renderers which use the Chameleon templating language to render a dictionary to a response. Additional renderers can be added by developers to the system as necessary (see Adding and Changing Renderers).

Views which use a renderer and return a non-Response value can vary non-body response attributes (such as headers and the HTTP status code) by attaching a property to the request.response attribute See Varying Attributes of Rendered Responses.

If the view callable associated with a view configuration returns a Response object directly, any renderer associated with the view configuration is ignored, and the response is passed back to Pyramid unchanged. For example, if your view callable returns an instance of the pyramid.response.Response class as a response, no renderer will be employed.

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from pyramid.response import Response
from pyramid.view import view_config

@view_config(renderer='json')
def view(request):
    return Response('OK') # json renderer avoided

Likewise for an HTTP exception response:

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from pyramid.httpexceptions import HTTPFound
from pyramid.view import view_config

@view_config(renderer='json')
def view(request):
    return HTTPFound(location='http://example.com') # json renderer avoided

You can of course also return the request.response attribute instead to avoid rendering:

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from pyramid.view import view_config

@view_config(renderer='json')
def view(request):
    request.response.body = 'OK'
    return request.response # json renderer avoided

Built-In Renderers

Several built-in renderers exist in Pyramid. These renderers can be used in the renderer attribute of view configurations.

string: String Renderer

The string renderer is a renderer which renders a view callable result to a string. If a view callable returns a non-Response object, and the string renderer is associated in that view’s configuration, the result will be to run the object through the Python str function to generate a string. Note that if a Unicode object is returned by the view callable, it is not str() -ified.

Here’s an example of a view that returns a dictionary. If the string renderer is specified in the configuration for this view, the view will render the returned dictionary to the str() representation of the dictionary:

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from pyramid.view import view_config

@view_config(renderer='string')
def hello_world(request):
    return {'content':'Hello!'}

The body of the response returned by such a view will be a string representing the str() serialization of the return value:

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{'content': 'Hello!'}

Views which use the string renderer can vary non-body response attributes by using the API of the request.response attribute. See Varying Attributes of Rendered Responses.

json: JSON Renderer

The json renderer renders view callable results to JSON. It passes the return value through the json.dumps standard library function, and wraps the result in a response object. It also sets the response content-type to application/json.

Here’s an example of a view that returns a dictionary. Since the json renderer is specified in the configuration for this view, the view will render the returned dictionary to a JSON serialization:

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from pyramid.view import view_config

@view_config(renderer='json')
def hello_world(request):
    return {'content':'Hello!'}

The body of the response returned by such a view will be a string representing the JSON serialization of the return value:

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'{"content": "Hello!"}'

The return value needn’t be a dictionary, but the return value must contain values serializable by json.dumps().

You can configure a view to use the JSON renderer by naming json as the renderer argument of a view configuration, e.g. by using add_view():

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config.add_view('myproject.views.hello_world',
                 name='hello',
                 context='myproject.resources.Hello',
                 renderer='json')

Views which use the JSON renderer can vary non-body response attributes by using the api of the request.response attribute. See Varying Attributes of Rendered Responses.

JSONP Renderer

Note

This feature is new in Pyramid 1.1.

pyramid.renderers.JSONP is a JSONP renderer factory helper which implements a hybrid json/jsonp renderer. JSONP is useful for making cross-domain AJAX requests.

Unlike other renderers, a JSONP renderer needs to be configured at startup time “by hand”. Configure a JSONP renderer using the pyramid.config.Configurator.add_renderer() method:

from pyramid.config import Configurator

config = Configurator()
config.add_renderer('jsonp', JSONP(param_name='callback'))

Once this renderer is registered via add_renderer() as above, you can use jsonp as the renderer= parameter to @view_config or pyramid.config.Configurator.add_view`():

from pyramid.view import view_config

@view_config(renderer='jsonp')
def myview(request):
    return {'greeting':'Hello world'}

When a view is called that uses a JSONP renderer:

  • If there is a parameter in the request’s HTTP query string (aka request.GET) that matches the param_name of the registered JSONP renderer (by default, callback), the renderer will return a JSONP response.
  • If there is no callback parameter in the request’s query string, the renderer will return a ‘plain’ JSON response.

Javscript library AJAX functionality will help you make JSONP requests. For example, JQuery has a getJSON function, and has equivalent (but more complicated) functionality in its ajax function.

For example (Javascript):

var api_url = 'http://api.geonames.org/timezoneJSON' +
              '?lat=38.301733840000004' +
              '&lng=-77.45869621' +
              '&username=fred' +
              '&callback=?';
jqhxr = $.getJSON(api_url);

The string callback=? above in the the url param to the JQuery getAjax function indicates to jQuery that the query should be made as a JSONP request; the callback parameter will be automatically filled in for you and used.

*.pt or *.txt: Chameleon Template Renderers

Two built-in renderers exist for Chameleon templates.

If the renderer attribute of a view configuration is an absolute path, a relative path or asset specification which has a final path element with a filename extension of .pt, the Chameleon ZPT renderer is used. See Chameleon ZPT Templates for more information about ZPT templates.

If the renderer attribute of a view configuration is an absolute path or a asset specification which has a final path element with a filename extension of .txt, the Chameleon text renderer is used. See Templating with Chameleon Text Templates for more information about Chameleon text templates.

The behavior of these renderers is the same, except for the engine used to render the template.

When a renderer attribute that names a template path or asset specification (e.g. myproject:templates/foo.pt or myproject:templates/foo.txt) is used, the view must return a Response object or a Python dictionary. If the view callable with an associated template returns a Python dictionary, the named template will be passed the dictionary as its keyword arguments, and the template renderer implementation will return the resulting rendered template in a response to the user. If the view callable returns anything but a Response object or a dictionary, an error will be raised.

Before passing keywords to the template, the keyword arguments derived from the dictionary returned by the view are augmented. The callable object – whatever object was used to define the view – will be automatically inserted into the set of keyword arguments passed to the template as the view keyword. If the view callable was a class, the view keyword will be an instance of that class. Also inserted into the keywords passed to the template are renderer_name (the string used in the renderer attribute of the directive), renderer_info (an object containing renderer-related information), context (the context resource of the view used to render the template), and request (the request passed to the view used to render the template). request is also available as req in Pyramid 1.3+.

Here’s an example view configuration which uses a Chameleon ZPT renderer:

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 # config is an instance of pyramid.config.Configurator

 config.add_view('myproject.views.hello_world',
                 name='hello',
                 context='myproject.resources.Hello',
                 renderer='myproject:templates/foo.pt')

Here’s an example view configuration which uses a Chameleon text renderer:

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 config.add_view('myproject.views.hello_world',
                 name='hello',
                 context='myproject.resources.Hello',
                 renderer='myproject:templates/foo.txt')

Views which use a Chameleon renderer can vary response attributes by using the API of the request.response attribute. See Varying Attributes of Rendered Responses.

*.mak or *.mako: Mako Template Renderer

The Mako template renderer renders views using a Mako template. When used, the view must return a Response object or a Python dictionary. The dictionary items will then be used in the global template space. If the view callable returns anything but a Response object or a dictionary, an error will be raised.

When using a renderer argument to a view configuration to specify a Mako template, the value of the renderer may be a path relative to the mako.directories setting (e.g. some/template.mak) or, alternately, it may be a asset specification (e.g. apackage:templates/sometemplate.mak). Mako templates may internally inherit other Mako templates using a relative filename or a asset specification as desired.

Here’s an example view configuration which uses a relative path:

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 # config is an instance of pyramid.config.Configurator

 config.add_view('myproject.views.hello_world',
                 name='hello',
                 context='myproject.resources.Hello',
                 renderer='foo.mak')

It’s important to note that in Mako’s case, the ‘relative’ path name foo.mak above is not relative to the package, but is relative to the directory (or directories) configured for Mako via the mako.directories configuration file setting.

The renderer can also be provided in asset specification format. Here’s an example view configuration which uses one:

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 config.add_view('myproject.views.hello_world',
                 name='hello',
                 context='myproject.resources.Hello',
                 renderer='mypackage:templates/foo.mak')

The above configuration will use the file named foo.mak in the templates directory of the mypackage package.

The Mako template renderer can take additional arguments beyond the standard pyramid.reload_templates setting, see the Environment Variables and .ini File Settings for additional Mako Template Render Settings.

Varying Attributes of Rendered Responses

Before a response constructed by a renderer is returned to Pyramid, several attributes of the request are examined which have the potential to influence response behavior.

View callables that don’t directly return a response should use the API of the pyramid.response.Response attribute available as request.response during their execution, to influence associated response behavior.

For example, if you need to change the response status from within a view callable that uses a renderer, assign the status attribute to the response attribute of the request before returning a result:

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from pyramid.view import view_config

@view_config(name='gone', renderer='templates/gone.pt')
def myview(request):
    request.response.status = '404 Not Found'
    return {'URL':request.URL}

Note that mutations of request.response in views which return a Response object directly will have no effect unless the response object returned is request.response. For example, the following example calls request.response.set_cookie, but this call will have no effect, because a different Response object is returned.

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from pyramid.response import Response

def view(request):
    request.response.set_cookie('abc', '123') # this has no effect
    return Response('OK') # because we're returning a different response

If you mutate request.response and you’d like the mutations to have an effect, you must return request.response:

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def view(request):
    request.response.set_cookie('abc', '123')
    return request.response

For more information on attributes of the request, see the API documentation in pyramid.request. For more information on the API of request.response, see pyramid.request.Request.response.

Deprecated Mechanism to Vary Attributes of Rendered Responses

Warning

This section describes behavior deprecated in Pyramid 1.1.

In previous releases of Pyramid (1.0 and before), the request.response attribute did not exist. Instead, Pyramid required users to set special response_ -prefixed attributes of the request to influence response behavior. As of Pyramid 1.1, those request attributes are deprecated and their use will cause a deprecation warning to be issued when used. Until their existence is removed completely, we document them below, for benefit of people with older code bases.

response_content_type
Defines the content-type of the resulting response, e.g. text/xml.
response_headerlist
A sequence of tuples describing header values that should be set in the response, e.g. [('Set-Cookie', 'abc=123'), ('X-My-Header', 'foo')].
response_status
A WSGI-style status code (e.g. 200 OK) describing the status of the response.
response_charset
The character set (e.g. UTF-8) of the response.
response_cache_for
A value in seconds which will influence Cache-Control and Expires headers in the returned response. The same can also be achieved by returning various values in the response_headerlist, this is purely a convenience.

Adding and Changing Renderers

New templating systems and serializers can be associated with Pyramid renderer names. To this end, configuration declarations can be made which change an existing renderer factory, and which add a new renderer factory.

Renderers can be registered imperatively using the pyramid.config.Configurator.add_renderer() API.

For example, to add a renderer which renders views which have a renderer attribute that is a path that ends in .jinja2:

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config.add_renderer('.jinja2', 'mypackage.MyJinja2Renderer')

The first argument is the renderer name. The second argument is a reference to an implementation of a renderer factory or a dotted Python name referring to such an object.

Adding a New Renderer

You may add a new renderer by creating and registering a renderer factory.

A renderer factory implementation is typically a class with the following interface:

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class RendererFactory:
    def __init__(self, info):
        """ Constructor: info will be an object having the
        following attributes: name (the renderer name), package
        (the package that was 'current' at the time the
        renderer was registered), type (the renderer type
        name), registry (the current application registry) and
        settings (the deployment settings dictionary). """

    def __call__(self, value, system):
        """ Call the renderer implementation with the value
        and the system value passed in as arguments and return
        the result (a string or unicode object).  The value is
        the return value of a view.  The system value is a
        dictionary containing available system values
        (e.g. view, context, and request). """

The formal interface definition of the info object passed to a renderer factory constructor is available as pyramid.interfaces.IRendererInfo.

There are essentially two different kinds of renderer factories:

  • A renderer factory which expects to accept an asset specification, or an absolute path, as the name attribute of the info object fed to its constructor. These renderer factories are registered with a name value that begins with a dot (.). These types of renderer factories usually relate to a file on the filesystem, such as a template.
  • A renderer factory which expects to accept a token that does not represent a filesystem path or an asset specification in the name attribute of the info object fed to its constructor. These renderer factories are registered with a name value that does not begin with a dot. These renderer factories are typically object serializers.

Here’s an example of the registration of a simple renderer factory via add_renderer():

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# config is an instance of pyramid.config.Configurator

config.add_renderer(name='amf', factory='my.package.MyAMFRenderer')

Adding the above code to your application startup configuration will allow you to use the my.package.MyAMFRenderer renderer factory implementation in view configurations. Your application can use this renderer by specifying amf in the renderer attribute of a view configuration:

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from pyramid.view import view_config

@view_config(renderer='amf')
def myview(request):
    return {'Hello':'world'}

At startup time, when a view configuration is encountered, which has a name attribute that does not contain a dot, the full name value is used to construct a renderer from the associated renderer factory. In this case, the view configuration will create an instance of an MyAMFRenderer for each view configuration which includes amf as its renderer value. The name passed to the MyAMFRenderer constructor will always be amf.

Here’s an example of the registration of a more complicated renderer factory, which expects to be passed a filesystem path:

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config.add_renderer(name='.jinja2',
                    factory='my.package.MyJinja2Renderer')

Adding the above code to your application startup will allow you to use the my.package.MyJinja2Renderer renderer factory implementation in view configurations by referring to any renderer which ends in .jinja in the renderer attribute of a view configuration:

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from pyramid.view import view_config

@view_config(renderer='templates/mytemplate.jinja2')
def myview(request):
    return {'Hello':'world'}

When a view configuration is encountered at startup time, which has a name attribute that does contain a dot, the value of the name attribute is split on its final dot. The second element of the split is typically the filename extension. This extension is used to look up a renderer factory for the configured view. Then the value of renderer is passed to the factory to create a renderer for the view. In this case, the view configuration will create an instance of a MyJinja2Renderer for each view configuration which includes anything ending with .jinja2 in its renderer value. The name passed to the MyJinja2Renderer constructor will be the full value that was set as renderer= in the view configuration.

Changing an Existing Renderer

You can associate more than one filename extension with the same existing renderer implementation as necessary if you need to use a different file extension for the same kinds of templates. For example, to associate the .zpt extension with the Chameleon ZPT renderer factory, use the pyramid.config.Configurator.add_renderer() method:

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config.add_renderer('.zpt', 'pyramid.chameleon_zpt.renderer_factory')

After you do this, Pyramid will treat templates ending in both the .pt and .zpt filename extensions as Chameleon ZPT templates.

To change the default mapping in which files with a .pt extension are rendered via a Chameleon ZPT page template renderer, use a variation on the following in your application’s startup code:

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config.add_renderer('.pt', 'mypackage.pt_renderer')

After you do this, the renderer factory in mypackage.pt_renderer will be used to render templates which end in .pt, replacing the default Chameleon ZPT renderer.

To associate a default renderer with all view configurations (even ones which do not possess a renderer attribute), pass None as the name attribute to the renderer tag:

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config.add_renderer(None, 'mypackage.json_renderer_factory')

Overriding A Renderer At Runtime

Warning

This is an advanced feature, not typically used by “civilians”.

In some circumstances, it is necessary to instruct the system to ignore the static renderer declaration provided by the developer in view configuration, replacing the renderer with another after a request starts. For example, an “omnipresent” XML-RPC implementation that detects that the request is from an XML-RPC client might override a view configuration statement made by the user instructing the view to use a template renderer with one that uses an XML-RPC renderer. This renderer would produce an XML-RPC representation of the data returned by an arbitrary view callable.

To use this feature, create a NewRequest subscriber which sniffs at the request data and which conditionally sets an override_renderer attribute on the request itself, which is the name of a registered renderer. For example:

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from pyramid.event import subscriber
from pyramid.event import NewRequest

@subscriber(NewRequest)
def set_xmlrpc_params(event):
    request = event.request
    if (request.content_type == 'text/xml'
            and request.method == 'POST'
            and not 'soapaction' in request.headers
            and not 'x-pyramid-avoid-xmlrpc' in request.headers):
        params, method = parse_xmlrpc_request(request)
        request.xmlrpc_params, request.xmlrpc_method = params, method
        request.is_xmlrpc = True
        request.override_renderer = 'xmlrpc'
        return True

The result of such a subscriber will be to replace any existing static renderer configured by the developer with a (notional, nonexistent) XML-RPC renderer if the request appears to come from an XML-RPC client.