Django display 404 on missing template

If you want this behaviour for all views on your site, you might want to write your own middleware with a process_exception method.

from django.template import TemplateDoesNotExistfrom django.views.defaults import page_not_foundclass TemplateDoesNotExistMiddleware(object):    """     If this is enabled, the middleware will catch    TemplateDoesNotExist exceptions, and return a 404    response.    """    def process_exception(self, request, exception):        if isinstance(exception, TemplateDoesNotExist):            return page_not_found(request)

If you have defined your own handler404 you would need to replace page_not_found above. I'm not immediately sure how you could convert the string handler404 into the callable required in the middleware..

To enable your middleware, add it to MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES in settings.py. Be careful of the position where you add it. The standard Django middleware warning applies:

Again, middleware are run in reverse order during the response phase, which includes process_exception. If an exception middleware returns a response, the middleware classes above that middleware will not be called at all.

put the return of the response in the view (or whereever the template is rendered) in a try-except block:

from django.http import Http404from django.shortcuts import render_to_responsefrom django.template import TemplateDoesNotExistdef the_view(request):    ...    try:        return render_to_response(...)    except TemplateDoesNotExist:        raise Http404

Off the top of my head, but if you set DEBUG=False in your settings, won't you get a 404 then on every error (including TemplateNotFound)?