Our infrastructure uses **Django** alongside **nginx**. We utilize the powerful tool **GoAccess** to parse nginx logs and convert them into beautiful, comprehensive HTML reports (stay tuned for a dedicated blog post on that setup!).

However, a recent update to GoAccess introduced strings like {{#from}} directly into its generated HTML output. Since these closely resemble **Django's template variable syntax** ({{ variable }}), attempting to render the file with Django's standard render() function triggers a fatal:

TemplateSyntaxError: Invalid block tag on line X: 'from'

Here is a screenshot.

Django Template Syntax Error
Django Template Syntax Error

This occurs because the Django template engine tries to parse the GoAccess code as if it were a Django tag, leading to an "Error during template rendering."

The Solution: Bypassing the Template Engine

The fix is to bypass Django's template engine entirely. Instead of using Django's render() function, which automatically processes the file as a template, we instruct Python to open the file and return its content directly as a raw HttpResponse.

The custom view below handles this, ensuring only superusers can view the sensitive log data:

def log_viewer(request):
    if request.user.is_superuser:
        # 1. Open the file in binary read mode ('rb')
        with open(f'/dir/to/log.html', 'rb') as f:
            html_content = f.read()
            
        # 2. Return the raw content directly as an HttpResponse
        return HttpResponse(html_content)
   
    # Redirect non-superusers away
    else:
        return redirect('home')

### Best Practices in the Code Snippet

  • Security Check: The if request.user.is_superuser: check is critical for protecting your sensitive access logs.
  • File Mode 'rb': Notice that the file is opened using **'rb'** (read binary) instead of the typical 'r' (read text). Using binary mode is the most robust way to handle external HTML files, as it prevents potential character encoding errors (e.g., UnicodeDecodeError) that can occur when reading complex HTML content as plain text.

This method ensures the GoAccess HTML is served immediately to the browser without Django ever attempting to parse the confusing GoAccess syntax, resolving the TemplateSyntaxError beautifully.