How to access a dictionary element in a Django template?

choices = {'key1':'val1', 'key2':'val2'}

Here's the template:

<ul>{% for key, value in choices.items %}   <li>{{key}} - {{value}}</li>{% endfor %}</ul>

Basically, .items is a Django keyword that splits a dictionary into a list of (key, value) pairs, much like the Python method .items(). This enables iteration over a dictionary in a Django template.

you can use the dot notation:

Dot lookups can be summarized like this: when the template system encounters a dot in a variable name, it tries the following lookups, in this order:

• Dictionary lookup (e.g., foo["bar"])
• Attribute lookup (e.g., foo.bar)
• Method call (e.g., foo.bar())
• List-index lookup (e.g., foo[2])

The system uses the first lookup type that works. It’s short-circuit logic.

To echo / extend upon Jeff's comment, what I think you should aim for is simply a property in your Choice class that calculates the number of votes associated with that object:

class Choice(models.Model):    text = models.CharField(max_length=200)    def calculateVotes(self):        return Vote.objects.filter(choice=self).count()    votes = property(calculateVotes)

And then in your template, you can do:

{% for choice in choices %}    {{choice.choice}} - {{choice.votes}} <br />{% endfor %}

The template tag, is IMHO a bit overkill for this solution, but it's not a terrible solution either. The goal of templates in Django is to insulate you from code in your templates and vice-versa.

I'd try the above method and see what SQL the ORM generates as I'm not sure off the top of my head if it will pre-cache the properties and just create a subselect for the property or if it will iteratively / on-demand run the query to calculate vote count. But if it generates atrocious queries, you could always populate the property in your view with data you've collected yourself.