touchable-templates 2026.2.8a0

A dev tool that magically opens templates and partials in your IDE

touchable-templates

touchable-templates is a small developer helper that wraps rendered templates in a lightweight HTML marker and ships a tiny client-side script so you can, for example, click on a rendered component in the browser to automatically open the source template in your IDE.

This package is purposely minimal and designed to be installed into Django projects. Note: Future versions may support Jinja2, Flask, and other frameworks. This package is not intended to be used in production.

Key features

• Server-side wrapper for Django template responses (middleware)
• Small client-side script included as package static files

Installation

pip install

pip install touchable-templates

uv install

uv add touchable-templates

Django integration (quick start)

1. Add the app to your INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    # ...
  "touchable_templates",
]

2. Add the middleware so HTML responses are post-processed to convert wrapper containers into elements with the touchable-templates class (the client script uses that):

MIDDLEWARE = [
    # ...
  "touchable_templates.django.middleware.TouchableTemplatesMiddleware",
    # ...
]

3. Add the template loaders.

TEMPLATES = [
    {
        # ...
        "OPTIONS": {
            "loaders": [
                # "touchable_templates.django.loader.TouchableCottonLoader", # Uncomment if using django-cotton
                "touchable_templates.django.loader.TouchableTemplatesLoader",
                "touchable_templates.django.loader.TouchableTemplatesAppDirectoriesLoader",
                # ...
            ],
        },
    },
]

4. Configure enablement and IDE mapping. You can set these via environment variables or in settings.py. Example (development):

# TOUCHABLE_TEMPLATES settings (example)
TOUCHABLE_TEMPLATES_ENABLE = True
TOUCHABLE_TEMPLATES_IDE = "vscode"
# Optional settings: Use if your project is dockerized or paths need adjustment
TOUCHABLE_TEMPLATES_ROOT = "/full/path/to/your/project/root/on/local/machine"
TOUCHABLE_TEMPLATES_REMOVE_PREFIX = "project/root/in/docker/container"

Supported IDEs

• atom
• codelite
• cursor
• emacs
• espresso
• idea
• macvim
• netbeans
• nova
• pycharm
• sublime
• textmate
• vscode
• vscode-insiders
• vscode-insiders-remote
• vscode-remote
• vscodium
• xdebug

5. Include the client JavaScript in your base template (requires django.contrib.staticfiles): Add Script tag at the end of the body, or in the head.

{% load static %}
<script src="{% static 'js/touchable_templates.js' %}"></script>

Use

Press the alt or opt key to toggle the functionality on and off. Moving your mouse around the page you will see a floating element indicating the template path/name Click on any element on the page to open the corresponding template in your configured IDE.

Notes

• The middleware only processes responses with Content-Type: text/html to ensure we are not processing json requests.
• Make sure TOUCHABLE_TEMPLATES_ENABLE is True in development and False in production.
• Use TOUCHABLE_TEMPLATES_REMOVE_PREFIX to strip any leading path segments that are not part of the local filesystem path (e.g. if your project runs in a Docker container with a different root path).
• Touchable-templates only processes templates that are part of your project. It skips templates that are part of third-party packages (e.g. in site-packages or dist-packages).

Troubleshooting

• No overlay appears: verify TOUCHABLE_TEMPLATES_ENABLE is True and the JS is loaded correctly (check browser devtools network tab).
• Alt-click does nothing: ensure the HTML elements have touchable-templates class (middleware unwraps container into children).

License

MIT License (MIT)