Django template can't loop defaultdict

You can avoid the copy to a new dict by disabling the defaulting feature of defaultdict once you are done inserting new values:

new_data.default_factory = None

Explanation

The template variable resolution algorithm in Django will attempt to resolve new_data.items as new_data['items'] first, which resolves to an empty list when using defaultdict(list).

To disable the defaulting to an empty list and have Django fail on new_data['items'] then continue the resolution attempts until calling new_data.items(), the default_factory attribute of defaultdict can be set to None.

try:

dict(new_data)

and in Python 2 it is better to use iteritems instead of items :)