A simple Django template tag to handle navigation item selection.

Add the app to your INSTALLED_APPS setting:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    # ...
    'django_navtag',
)

Give your base template a navigation block something like this:

{% load navtag %}

{% block nav %}
{% nav text ' class="selected"' %}
<ul class="nav">
    <li{{ nav.home }}><a href="/">Home</a></li>
    <li{{ nav.about }}><a href="/about/">About</a></li>
</ul>
{% endblock %}

In your templates, extend the base and set the navigation location:

{% extends "base.html" %}

{% block nav %}
{% nav "home" %}
{{ block.super }}
{% endblock %}

To create a sub-menu you can check against, simply dot-separate the item:

{% nav "about_menu.info" %}

This will be pass for both {% if nav.about_menu %} and {% if nav.about_menu.info %}.

By default, this tag creates a nav context variable. To use an alternate context variable name, call {% nav [item] for [var_name] %}:

{% block nav %}
{% nav "home" for sidenav %}
{{ block.super }}
{% endblock %}

As shown in the initial example, you can set the text return value of the nav context variable. Use the format {% nav text [content] %}. For example:

{% nav text "active" %}
<ul>
<li class="{{ nav.home }}">Home</li>
<li class="{{ nav.contact }}">Contact</li>
</ul>

Alternately, you can use boolean comparison of the context variable rather than text value:

<section{% if nav.home %} class="wide"{% endif %}>

If using a different context variable name, use the format {% nav text [content] for [var_name] %}.