# GSoC 2026 Pre-Proposal: Add Ergonomic Control over Behaviour of Missing Variables in Templates

**URL:** <https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/gsoc-2026-pre-proposal-add-ergonomic-control-over-behaviour-of-missing-variables-in-templates/44517>\
**Category:** Google Season of Code\
**Created:** [March 15, 2026, 10:40am UTC](https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/gsoc-2026-pre-proposal-add-ergonomic-control-over-behaviour-of-missing-variables-in-templates/44517 "2026-03-15T10:40:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![vidhiii1711](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex026/user_avatar/forum.djangoproject.com/vidhiii1711/32/31354_2.png) [@vidhiii1711](https://forum.djangoproject.com/u/vidhiii1711)\
**Post date:** [March 15, 2026, 10:40am UTC](https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/gsoc-2026-pre-proposal-add-ergonomic-control-over-behaviour-of-missing-variables-in-templates/44517/1 "2026-03-15T10:40:35Z")

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Hi everyone! I’m Vidhi Singh (vidhiii1711), a 2nd-year B.Tech AI & ML student. I’m interested in working on the template ergonomics idea for GSoC 2026.

**About Me & My Contributions**

I’ve been contributing to the Django ecosystem and currently have 6 PRs on [djangoproject.com](http://djangoproject.com), one of which is merged:

- ✅ Merged — #1646: Fixed 405 error when non-superuser tries to delete their own feed from the community blog
- #2446: Migrating project tooling from black/isort/flake8 to ruff (currently under review)
- #2341: Investigating and fixing caching of 404 responses
- #877: Replacing robots.txt blocking with noindex meta tag for untranslated docs
- #2067: Fixing broken links/images when extra slashes appear in URLs
- #835: GitHub OAuth login not persisting session on community pages

My contributions are on [djangoproject.com](http://djangoproject.com) rather than django/django core. I want to be upfront about that. However, working on these issues gave me a solid understanding of how Django handles HTTP behaviour, middleware, caching, and project configuration — and I’ve been actively reading django/template/base.py to prepare for this proposal.

* * *

**The Problem**

Django templates silently return an empty string when a variable is missing from the context. This is fine by default, but during development, silent failures hide real bugs. A developer who accidentally omits `user_email` from a view’s context will never know — the page just renders blank.

**Proposed Solution**

I see two viable approaches and would love mentor feedback on which direction is preffered:

#### Approach 1 - New Template Syntax (`!` and `?`)

As suggested in the original issue:

{{ username }} → required , raise VariableDoesNotExist if missing

{{ bio? }} → explicity optional, silient if missing

This requires modifying the laxer/parser in `django/template/base.py` - specifically the `Filterexpression`and `Variable.resolve()` method.

#### Approach 2 - Per variable context flag

Extend the existing `string_if_invalid` TEMPLATES settings to support per variable behaviour.

My personal preference is **Approach 1** , as it is the most ergonomic for template authors and alings with the original feature request.But I’m open to guidance from mentors.

**Why Me**

I know my contributions are on the website repo , not core. But every PR I worked on required me to deeply read Django internals - caching middleware , URL resolvers , HTTP response handling , and auth flows. I’m a fast learner and I’ve already started reading `django/template/base.py` specifically for this proposal. I’m commited to making meaningful contributions to Django core starting now.

Looking forward to feedback from the community and mentors. Thankyou!