Hi all, I've got an external method that does an SQL lookup and retrieves (essentially) two fields, tagclass and content. What I'm doing at the moment is; if tagclass == 'modulecontributor': template_str = self.RENDER.modulecontributor.read_raw() template = DocumentTemplate.HTML(template_str) theresult = template(self, content=content) return theresult How can I do something like; try: template_str = self.RENDER.(the contents of tagclass).read_raw() template = DocumentTemplate.HTML(template_str) theresult = template(self, content=content) return theresult except KeyError: return "no renderer for %s" % tagclass any pointers gratefully received.. tone ------ Dr Tony McDonald, FMCC, Networked Learning Environments Project http://nle.ncl.ac.uk/ The Medical School, Newcastle University Tel: +44 191 222 5888 Fingerprint: 3450 876D FA41 B926 D3DD F8C3 F2D0 C3B9 8B38 18A2