Django: custom 404 handler that returns 404 status code

The project I'm working on has some data that needs to get passed to every view, so we have a wrapper around render_to_response called master_rtr. Ok.

Now, I need our 404 pages to run through this as well. Per the instructions, I created a custom 404 handler (cleverly called custom_404) that calls master_rtr. Everything looks good, but our tests are failing, because we're receiving back a 200 OK.

So, I'm trying to figure out how to return a 404 status code, instead. There seems to be an HttpResponseNotFound class that's kinda what I want, but I'm not quite sure how to construct all of that nonsense instead of using render_to_response. Or rather, I could probably figure it out, but it seems like their must be an easier way; is there?

The appropriate parts of the code:

 def master_rtr(request, template, data = {}):
  if request.user.is_authenticated():
   # Since we're only grabbing the enrollments to get at the courses, 
   # doing select_related() will save us from having to hit database for
   # every course the user is enrolled in
   data['courses'] = \
    [e.course for e in \
     Enrollment.objects.select_related().filter(user=request.user) \
     if e.view]
  else:
开发者_Python百科   if "anonCourses" in request.session:
    data['courses'] = request.session['anonCourses']
   else:
    data['courses'] = []

  data['THEME'] = settings.THEME

  return render_to_response(template, data, context_instance=RequestContext(request))

 def custom_404(request):
  response = master_rtr(request, '404.html')
  response.status_code = 404
  return response

The easy way:

def custom_404(request):
    response = master_rtr(...)
    response.status_code = 404
    return response

But I have to ask: why aren't you just using a context processor along with a RequestContext to pass the data to the views?

Just set status_code on the response.

Into your application's views.py add:

# Imports
from django.shortcuts import render
from django.http import HttpResponse
from django.template import Context, loader


##
# Handle 404 Errors
# @param request WSGIRequest list with all HTTP Request
def error404(request):

    # 1. Load models for this view
    #from idgsupply.models import My404Method

    # 2. Generate Content for this view
    template = loader.get_template('404.htm')
    context = Context({
        'message': 'All: %s' % request,
        })

    # 3. Return Template for this view + Data
    return HttpResponse(content=template.render(context), content_type='text/html; charset=utf-8', status=404)

The secret is in the last line: status=404

Hope it helped!