python bottle - why is the simple template engine turning my dict into a list?

Question

I'm calling the template in the following route:

page = {"name": "welcome", "title": "Welcome", "icon": "/images/welcome-icon.png"}
contentOnly = request.query.get("contentOnly")
formRedirect = False
admin = is_admin()
announcments = get_announcments()
page = ""
if contentOnly:
  page += template("./views/welcome.tpl", contentOnly = contentOnly, announcments = announcments)
else:
  page += template("./views/header.tpl", page = page, admin = admin)
  page += template("./views/welcome.tpl", contentOnly = contentOnly, announcments = announcments)
  page += template("./views/footer.tpl", formRedirect = formRedirect)

When it hits this line in header.tpl:

%if page['name'] == "welcome":

It throws the following error:

File "/home/brett/projects/tastech website/development/views/header.tpl", line 5, in <module>
%if page['name'] == "welcome":
TypeError: string indices must be integers

Answer 1

You set page to an empty string, before calling the template:

page = ""
# ...
else:
    page += template("./views/header.tpl", page = page, admin = admin)

So within the template, page is set to "", the empty string.

Use a different name for the dictionary; page_data, perhaps:

page_data = {"name": "welcome", "title": "Welcome", "icon": "/images/welcome-icon.png"}
# ...
page = ""
# ...
else:
    page += template("./views/header.tpl", page=page_data, admin=admin)

Answer 2

You set page = "". So page is a string. Then you pass page to header.tpl. Well, it's a string, and you can't index into a string with another string.

Solution: use a different name for your string than for your dict.

Answer 3

You've overwritten the original dictionary called page with another variable, which is a string consisting of the concatenated template results. Call that something else.