Having access to a model function on every request for a user

Question

I have a model called Account, with has a model function (see code below). I would like to show in my template the users total on every page. The only way I can think of doing this in putting accounts in every view. What other options do I have? Can it be liked to request.user? I already have access to request in every view and Accounts has the FK user.

 def _balance(self):
        aggregates = self.transactions.aggregate(sum=Sum('amount'))
        sum = aggregates['sum']
        return D('0') if sum is None else sum 

Answer 1

You want a context processor. Every time you render a template, you give it a “context”; this is a dictionary-like object whose keys are variable names and whose values are the values of the variables.

For example..

Create a file my app/context_processors

def get_balance(request):
    do something
    return {'balance': 0}

add it to your settings:

TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS = ('myapp.context_processors.get_balance',)

done.