How can I override standard handler404, handler403, handler500 in Django?

Question

I have tried using https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/http/views/ tutorial, but still I am getting the standard 404 html page. I want to switch in to my custom view

handler404 = 'myview.views.custom_page_not_found' ,

I did debug it (using eclipse), then the value of handler404(old value -'django.config.default.views.page_not_found ) is changed to the new value I have given ('myview.views.custom_page_not_found'). But it's still showing the older 404 page. And I have changed settings.py DEBUG into False then it shows the custom page. But it got some disadvantages (it won't load static files and all, DEBUG = false is not the right way) so I had to reset to True.

Do I have to make some other modification for implementing this?

Answer 1

I think you can not change the 404 page in DEBUG = True mode without difficulty.

There is a hint in the documentation ( https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/http/views/#the-404-page-not-found-view ):

If DEBUG is set to True (in your settings module), then your 404 view will never be used, and your URLconf will be displayed instead, with some debug information.

Answer 2

Try adding this to the bottom of your main urls.py:

if settings.DEBUG:
    urlpatterns += patterns('',
        (r'^404/$', TemplateResponse, {'template': '404.html'}))

Swap out the 404.html to the appropriate template you use, I believe 404.html is the default though. Then with debug=True you can test out your 404 page.

If you want to Test it out with Debug=True then you need this at the bottom of your main urls.py instead:

#Enable static for runserver with debug false
from django.conf import settings
if settings.DEBUG is False:   #if DEBUG is True it will be served automatically
    urlpatterns += patterns('',
            url(r'^static/(?P<path>.*)$', 'django.views.static.serve', {'document_root': settings.STATIC_ROOT}),
    )

When running with DEBUG = False , don't forget to collect static:

python manage.py collectstatic

Hope this helps, Cheers!