Django HTTP 500 Error

The HttpResponseServerError inherits from HttpResponse and is actually quite simple:

class HttpResponseServerError(HttpResponse):
    status_code = 500

So let's look at the HttpResponse constructor:

def __init__(self, content='', *args, **kwargs):
    super(HttpResponse, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
    # Content is a bytestring. See the `content` property methods.
    self.content = content

As you can see by default content is empty.

Now, let's take a look at how it is called by Django itself (an excerpt from django.views.defaults):

def server_error(request, template_name='500.html'):
    """
    500 error handler.

    Templates: :template:`500.html`
    Context: None
    """
    try:
        template = loader.get_template(template_name)
    except TemplateDoesNotExist:
        return http.HttpResponseServerError('<h1>Server Error (500)</h1>')
    return http.HttpResponseServerError(template.render(Context({})))

As you can see when you produce a server error, the template named 500.html is used, but when you simply return HttpResponseServerError the content is empty and the browser falls back to it's default page.

Put this below in the urls.py.

#handle the errors    
from django.utils.functional import curry
from django.views.defaults import *

handler500 = curry(server_error, template_name='500.html')

Put 500.html in your templates. Just as simple like that.