I have 20 Django simple "foo.html" template files.

Do I need 20 TemplateViews and 20 entries in url_patterns or is there a simpler solution?

Using Django 2.1 and class-based views, your urls.py should be like this:

from django.urls import path



from your_app import views



app_name = 'your_app'



urlpatterns = [

    path('foo/<str:name>/', views.Foo.as_view(), name='foo'),

]

And your views.py like this:

from django.views import generic





class Foo(generic.TemplateView):



    def get_template_names(self)

        name = self.kwargs.get('name')

        # compute the template you want, for the example, I just take the name

        template_name = f'your_app/{name}.html'

        return [template_name]

And that's all ;)

You can have a path like path('pages/<str:page>, views.pages)

And then in the view do something similar to:

from django.template.loader import get_template

from django.template import TemplateDoesNotExist



def pages(request, page):

    template_name = f'your-app/{page}.html'

    try:

        get_template(template_name)

        return render(request, template_name)

    except TemplateDoesNotExist:

        # returns 404

A simpler solution with django 2.x.

Since you sound newer to django, this solution should be much easier. There's no reason to use f strings and try/except blocks with simple things. And I know when I started, class based views made no sense because there was no control flow.

urls.py

from django.urls import path

from . import views



app_name = 'article_app'



urlpatterns = [

    path('', views.article_list, name='article_list'),

    path('new/', views.article_new, name='article_new'),

    path('<int:art_pk>/', views.article_detail, name='article_detail'),

    path('<int:art_pk>/update/', views.article_update, name='article_update'),

    path('<int:art_pk>/delete/', views.article_delete, name='article_delete'),

    # and so on....

]

views.py

from django.shortcuts import render

from .models import Article



def article_detail(request, art_pk):

    article = Article.objects.get(pk=art_pk)

    return render(request, 'articles_app/article_detail.html', {'article': article})

template for article_detail.html

{% block maincontent %}



   <div class="article">

     <h2><u>{{ article.title }}</u></h2>

     <h3>By: {{ article.author }} --- Posted / Updated on: {{ article.date }}</h3>

     <p>{{ article.body }}</p>

     <p><a href="{% url 'article_app:article_update' article.pk %}">Update</a> | <a href="{% url 'article_app:article_delete' article.pk %}">Delete</a></p>

     <p><a href="{% url 'article_app:article_list' %}">Back to all articles</a></p>

   </div>



{% endblock maincontent %}

If you had something more complicated:

Lets say it's something that requires a few if/else statements to describe a Food model. Example:

models.py

class Food(models.Model):

    FLAVOR_CHOICES = (

        ('tasty', 'Very yummy'),

        ('disgusting', 'Nasty AF bro!'),

        ('super_sweet', 'For little kids'),

        ('bitter', 'Sure to grow hair on you balls!'),

    )

    food_choice = models.CharField(max_length=30, choices=FLAVOR_CHOICES, default='super_sweet')

    # and any other attribute for a Food

urls.py

app_name = 'food_app'



urlpatterns = [

    # ....

    path('<int:food_id>/', views.show_food, name='show_food'),

]

views.py

def show_food(request, food_id):

    food = Food.objects.get(id=food_id)

    if food.food_choice == 'tasty':

        return render(request, 'food_app/food_stats.html', {'tasty': 'Everyone likes tasty things'})

    elif food.food_choice == 'bitter':

        return render(request, 'food_app/food_stats.html', {'bitter': 'Girls do not want to have balls. Sure way to end the gene pool.'})

    # .... and so on with other choices

    else:

        return render(request, 'food_app/food_stats.html')

Then your food_stats.html template would look something like this

Note that this should be used instead of creating separate pages for 'bitter.html', 'tasty.html', 'super_sweet.html', etc.

{% block maincontent %}



  <h1>Your choice of food:</h1>



  {% if tasty %}

      <p>{{ tasty.food_choice }}</p>  {# this attribute would show the 2nd value for 'tasty' in the tuple of FLAVOR_CHOICES - 'Very yummy' #}

      <p>{{ tasty }}</p>   {# The value that shows here is the key I set in the view #}



  {% elif disgusting %}

      <p>{{ disgusting.food_choice }}</p>

      <p>{{ disgusting }}</p>



  {% elif super_sweet %}

      <p>{{ super_sweet.food_choice }}</p>

      <p>{{ super_sweet }}</p>



  {% elif bitter %}

      <p>{{ bitter.food_choice }}</p>

      <p>{{ bitter }}</p>



  {% else %}

      <p>No foods bro. You're lame.</p>



  {% endif %}



{% endblock maincontent %}

from django.conf.urls import url
from .import views

urlpatterns = [
# url(r'^/$', views.function_name, name="Page")

url(r'^$', views.home, name="Home Page"),

]

use this patterns match to show your .html pages