Rephrasing Yuri, Fábio, and Frosts answers for the Django noob (i.e. me) - almost certainly a simplification, but a good starting point?
render_to_response()
is the "original", but requires you putting context_instance=RequestContext(request)
in nearly all the time, a PITA.
direct_to_template()
is designed to be used just in urls.py without a view defined in views.py but it can be used in views.py to avoid having to type RequestContext
render()
is a shortcut for render_to_response()
that automatically supplies context_instance=Request
....
Its available in the django development version (1.2.1) but many have created their own shortcuts such as this one, this one or the one that threw me initially, Nathans basic.tools.shortcuts.py