Django returns TemplateDoesNotExist for namespaced app templates which are rendered by class views but works for plain function views

I'm new to Django and have a project myproject and inside is an app, users. I can't figure out why name spacing the my templates in a subdirectory inside of a folder called templates within the users apps (so the path is myproject/users/templates/users/) does not work for class based views but it works fine for regular function views.

When using a class based view I get error message Templateloader postmortem saying:

django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader: /home/me/projectmainfolder/myproject/users/templates/signup_form.html (Source does not exist)

django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader: /home/me/projectmainfolder/penv/lib/python3.10/site-packages/django/contrib/admin/templates/signup_form.html (Source does not exist)

django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader: /home/me/projectmainfolder/penv/lib/python3.10/site-packages/django/contrib/auth/templates/signup_form.html (Source does not exist)

When I move the template out of the name spaced sub-directory and into templates it works fine.

users/urls.py is:

from django.urls import path, include
from . import views

app_name = "users"

urlpatterns = [
    
    path("accounts/", include("django.contrib.auth.urls")),
    # works fine
    path("accounts/test", views.testdef, name="test"),
    #doesn't work
    path("accounts/signup/user", views.UserSignupView.as_view(), name="signup_form"),
]

The regular function testdef is :

def testdef(request):
    return render(request, "users/test.html")

The class view UserSignupView is:

class UserSignupView(CreateView):
    model = CustomUser
    form_class =UserProfileSignupForm
    template_name = 'signup_form.html'

    def somefunction(self, **kwargs):
        ...

Any idea how to resolve this is very appreciated. I would like to keep things name spaced according to Django's docs.

I tried moving the files around and found success that way but it seems sub-optimal considering Django tells you to organize a certain way.

Django searches, if the APP_DIRS setting ^[Django-doc] is enabled, in the templates/ directories of the applications, and this for all applications.

This thus means that you can indeed define namespaces by just defining subdirectories, that you then use in the template names. If your template is thus stored at <code>users/template/<b>users/signup_form.html</b></code>, you let Django look for the template with:

<pre><code>class UserSignupView(CreateView):
model = CustomUser
form_class = UserProfileSignupForm
template_name = '<b>users/</b>signup_form.html'</code></pre>

this is the same for function-based views and class-based views.

The template loader is not different (at least not in that aspect) between <code>render(&hellip;)</code> and the <code>.render_to_response(&hellip;)</code> method&nbsp;^[Django-doc] of the TemplateResponseMixin.