How to fix VariableDoesNotExist exception in Django

Posted on November 10, 2010 by Daniel Hepper

When Django greets you with this exception:

TemplateSyntaxError at /

Caught VariableDoesNotExist while rendering: Failed lookup for key [request] in...

you are probably using a template tag that requires the request context processor. Simply add ‘django.core.context_processors.request’ to the TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS tuple in your settings file.

10 thoughts on “How to fix VariableDoesNotExist exception in Django”

Dirk on April 14, 2011 at 14:41 said:

Wow this is a useless post
Daniel Hepper on April 14, 2011 at 14:49 said:

Sorry if it didn’t help you. I was facing this problem and adding the context processor was the solution. I appreciate any feedback how to make this post more useful.
Ricardo Lafuente on April 26, 2011 at 16:18 said:

I for one found this tip a lifesaver. The error messages didn’t help and this suggestion solved the issue perfectly.

Posts like yours are why I love the internet 🙂
Tim on September 12, 2011 at 8:44 said:

Thanks! That saved me tons of time! I’d have never figured that out!
r122513 on February 13, 2012 at 23:48 said:

This saved me a lot of time, I couldn’t figure out what was the problem in my django project. Thank you so much.
Joe on March 2, 2012 at 17:18 said:

Lifesafer. Thanks a bunch.
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Alex on March 6, 2013 at 2:14 said:

Helped me a lot!!
Alex Kreimer on June 8, 2013 at 9:06 said:

I’m having this now. And the context processor is already there, but django still complains…
Richard Jones on March 14, 2014 at 22:31 said:

It’s possible that you’re sending something to a template tag that should be in quotes.