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+Tips and Tricks
+===============
+
+.. highlight:: html+jinja
+
+This part of the documentation shows some tips and tricks for Jinja
+templates.
+
+
+.. _null-default-fallback:
+
+Null-Default Fallback
+---------------------
+
+Jinja supports dynamic inheritance and does not distinguish between parent
+and child template as long as no `extends` tag is visited. While this leads
+to the surprising behavior that everything before the first `extends` tag
+including whitespace is printed out instead of being ignored, it can be used
+for a neat trick.
+
+Usually child templates extend from one template that adds a basic HTML
+skeleton. However it's possible to put the `extends` tag into an `if` tag to
+only extend from the layout template if the `standalone` variable evaluates
+to false which it does per default if it's not defined. Additionally a very
+basic skeleton is added to the file so that if it's indeed rendered with
+`standalone` set to `True` a very basic HTML skeleton is added::
+
+ {% if not standalone %}{% extends 'default.html' %}{% endif -%}
+ <!DOCTYPE html>
+ <title>{% block title %}The Page Title{% endblock %}</title>
+ <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css" type="text/css">
+ {% block body %}
+ <p>This is the page body.</p>
+ {% endblock %}
+
+
+Alternating Rows
+----------------
+
+If you want to have different styles for each row of a table or
+list you can use the `cycle` method on the `loop` object::
+
+ <ul>
+ {% for row in rows %}
+ <li class="{{ loop.cycle('odd', 'even') }}">{{ row }}</li>
+ {% endfor %}
+ </ul>
+
+`cycle` can take an unlimited number of strings. Each time this
+tag is encountered the next item from the list is rendered.
+
+
+Highlighting Active Menu Items
+------------------------------
+
+Often you want to have a navigation bar with an active navigation
+item. This is really simple to achieve. Because assignments outside
+of `block`\s in child templates are global and executed before the layout
+template is evaluated it's possible to define the active menu item in the
+child template::
+
+ {% extends "layout.html" %}
+ {% set active_page = "index" %}
+
+The layout template can then access `active_page`. Additionally it makes
+sense to define a default for that variable::
+
+ {% set navigation_bar = [
+ ('/', 'index', 'Index'),
+ ('/downloads/', 'downloads', 'Downloads'),
+ ('/about/', 'about', 'About')
+ ] -%}
+ {% set active_page = active_page|default('index') -%}
+ ...
+ <ul id="navigation">
+ {% for href, id, caption in navigation_bar %}
+ <li{% if id == active_page %} class="active"{% endif %}>
+ <a href="{{ href|e }}">{{ caption|e }}</a></li>
+ {% endfor %}
+ </ul>
+ ...
+
+.. _accessing-the-parent-loop:
+
+Accessing the parent Loop
+-------------------------
+
+The special `loop` variable always points to the innermost loop. If it's
+desired to have access to an outer loop it's possible to alias it::
+
+ <table>
+ {% for row in table %}
+ <tr>
+ {% set rowloop = loop %}
+ {% for cell in row %}
+ <td id="cell-{{ rowloop.index }}-{{ loop.index }}">{{ cell }}</td>
+ {% endfor %}
+ </tr>
+ {% endfor %}
+ </table>