TemplateHTMLRenderer error blocks BrowsableAPIRenderer

[egasimus]

I have the following renderer stack:

REST_FRAMEWORK = {
    'DEFAULT_RENDERER_CLASSES': (
        'rest_framework.renderers.TemplateHTMLRenderer',
        'rest_framework.renderers.BrowsableAPIRenderer',
        'rest_framework.renderers.JSONRenderer',
    )
}

Let's say I have a view which doesn't have a template_name assigned. Quite expectedly, trying to open it makes TemplateHTMLRenderer spit out a nice TemplateDoesNotExist exception, and fail.

What I consider unexpected behavior, however, is the fact that, if I open that same URL with a ?format=api, I still get the same error, even though BrowsableAPIRenderer doesn't need the missing template.

[lovelydinosaur]

It will still need the template as the browseable API will attempt to render the content of the response as part of the page. You'll need to fix the missing template.

[egasimus]

attempt to render the content of the response as part of the page

This strikes me as odd. (Is it documented?)
I can probably think of cases when this would be useful, but then again, I can also imagine cases where it is undesirable. Shouldn't it be optional?

[lovelydinosaur]

This strikes me as odd. (Is it documented?)

I don't really understand - it's a core part of the browseable API. The response is rendered alongside the various editing controls etc. Granted it's more useful in a JSON context, than in the HTML context, but it still makes sense.

What's wrong with fixing the broken template_name 😕

[egasimus]

This renderer will determine which other renderer would have been given highest priority, and use that to display an API style response within the HTML page.

Seems that this is the actual bit that doesn't make much sense to me. For example, in my use case, I'm giving TemplateHTMLRenderer top priority so that user-facing pages don't need a ?format=html querystring; but I want to keep BrowsableAPIRenderer for convenience when developing against the JSON API - how am I supposed to tell the Browsable API to use the JSON representation of the data?