title: How to load jinja template directly from filesystem
body: <p>The <a href="http://jinja.pocoo.org/docs/dev/api/#" rel="noreferrer">jinja API document at pocoo.org</a> states:</p>
  
  <blockquote>The simplest way to configure Jinja2 to load templates for your application looks roughly like this:</blockquote>
  
  <pre><code>from jinja2 import Environment, PackageLoader
  env = Environment(loader=PackageLoader('yourapplication', 'templates'))
  </code></pre>
  
  <blockquote>This will create a template environment with the default settings and a loader that looks up the templates in the <i>templates</i> folder inside the <i>yourapplication</i> python package.</blockquote>
  
  <p>As it turns out, this isn't so simple because you have to make/install a python package with your templates in it, which introduces a lot of needless complexity, especially if you have no intention of distributing your code.  You can refer to SO questions on the topic <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38617900/need-to-package-jinja2-template-for-python">here</a> and <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29150156/how-to-make-a-python-package-containing-only-jinja-templates">here</a>, but the answers are vague and unsatisfying.</p>
  
  <p>What a naive newbie wants to do, obviously, is just load the template directly from the filesystem, not as a resource in a package.  <strong>How is this done?</strong></p>