The Problem

In the past few weeks I have been using Django to build a website for my local church. The project’s early conception required rapid prototyping of the UI, and I found myself using placeholder images in many places.

<img src="http://placehold.it/350x150"></img>

A Custom Tag

# project/app/templatetags/webextras.py
from django import template

register = template.Library()

@register.simple_tag
def fake_img(width, height):
    return 'https://placehold.it/{}x{}'.format(width, height)

For more info on custom tags, read the Django docs.

Now, to use the new tag in my templates:

<!-- At top of template -->
{% load fake_img from webextras %}

<!-- ... -->

<img src="{% fake_img 350 150 %}"></img>
<!-- Easily replaced with a static method call later. -->
<img src="{% static 'logo.png' %}"></img>