Is this the right way to use django-cotton with djust?

[AlexCRosa]

Hi, I am new to djust and I want to check if my approach makes sense before we build on it.

We would like to use djust together with django-cotton.

The problem

Cotton turns this:

<c-button variant="destructive">Delete</c-button>

into this:

{% cotton button variant="destructive" %}Delete{% endcotton %}

Then djust stops with:

RuntimeError: Template error: Unsupported template tag '{% cotton button %}'.
Register a handler via djust._rust.register_tag_handler(), or use Django's template engine instead.

My first idea was to make cotton finish its work earlier, so djust would only receive plain HTML. But cotton renders its components at runtime instead of expanding them up front, so I do not think that is possible.

What I tried

The error message suggested registering a handler, so I wrote a small one that passes the tag back to Django's engine:

class BridgeExample:
    def render(self, args, content, context):
        src = "{% cotton " + " ".join(args) + " %}__CONTENT_PLACEHOLDER__{% endcotton %}"
        html = engines["django"].from_string(src).render({})
        return html.replace("__CONTENT_PLACEHOLDER__", content)

# Django AppConfig
register_block_tag_handler("cotton", "endcotton", BridgeExample())

I register it once in AppConfig.ready().

It works. Components show up on the first page load and on WebSocket updates, values from the view appear inside components, and updates still look small (I only see SetText patches, even for text inside a component).

My questions

1. Is register_block_tag_handler meant to be used this way, or only for handlers that build the HTML themselves?
2. Is there a plan for third-party Django tag libraries to work with the Rust engine, or is writing a handler like this the expected way?
3. Since the component is rendered by Django's engine, I assume I lose the Rust speed for that part. Is there a better way?
4. I read there is no parent tag propagation for nested block handlers (tech-debt: parent-tag propagation for nested custom-tag handlers (deferred from PR #802) #804). Could that be a problem if I put a component inside another component's slot?

Thanks for any guidance.