Here's a cool bit of code snippet that I found from the web (original post here ). I'm recording it here for my own easy reference without having to google it all the time. It describes a simple technique to debug Django templates using the python debugger - pdb. @register.filter def pdb(element): import pdb; pdb.set_trace() return element Now, inside a template you can do {{ template_var|pdb }} and enter a pdb session (given you're running the local development server) where you can inspect element to your heart's content. It's a very nice way to see what's happened to your object when it arrives at the template.
mostly notes & some thoughts...