The Django Book

Streamlining function imports

Consider this URLconf, which builds on the example in Chapter 3:

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *
from mysite.views import current_datetime, hours_ahead, hours_behind, now_in_chicago, now_in_london

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^now/$', current_datetime),
    (r'^now/plus(\d{1,2})hours/$', hours_ahead),
    (r'^now/minus(\d{1,2})hours/$', hours_behind),
    (r'^now/in_chicago/$', now_in_chicago),
    (r'^now/in_london/$', now_in_london),
)

As explained in Chapter 3, each entry in the URLconf includes its associated view function, passed directly as a function object. This means it’s necessary to import the view functions at the top of the module.

But as a Django application grows in complexity, its URLconf grows, too, and keeping those imports can be tedious to manage. (For each new view function, you’ve got to remember to import it, and the import statement tends to get overly long if you use this approach.) It’s possible to avoid that tedium by importing the views module itself. This example URLconf is equivalent to the previous one:

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *
from mysite import views

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^now/$', views.current_datetime),
    (r'^now/plus(\d{1,2})hours/$', views.hours_ahead),
    (r'^now/minus(\d{1,2})hours/$', views.hours_behind),
    (r'^now/in_chicago/$', views.now_in_chicago),
    (r'^now/in_london/$', views.now_in_london),
)

Django offers another way of specifying the view function for a particular pattern in the URLconf: You can pass a string containing the module name and function name rather than the function object itself. Continuing the ongoing example:

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^now/$', 'mysite.views.current_datetime'),
    (r'^now/plus(\d{1,2})hours/$', 'mysite.views.hours_ahead'),
    (r'^now/minus(\d{1,2})hours/$', 'mysite.views.hours_behind'),
    (r'^now/in_chicago/$', 'mysite.views.now_in_chicago'),
    (r'^now/in_london/$', 'mysite.views.now_in_london'),
)

Using this technique, it’s no longer necessary to import the view functions; Django automatically imports the appropriate view function the first time it’s needed, according to the string describing the name and path of the view function.

A further shortcut you can take when using the string technique is to factor out a common “view prefix.” In our URLconf example, each of the view strings starts with 'mysite.views', which is redundant to type. We can factor out that common prefix and pass it as the first argument to patterns(), like this:

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *

urlpatterns = patterns('mysite.views',
    (r'^now/$', 'current_datetime'),
    (r'^now/plus(\d{1,2})hours/$', 'hours_ahead'),
    (r'^now/minus(\d{1,2})hours/$', 'hours_behind'),
    (r'^now/in_chicago/$', 'now_in_chicago'),
    (r'^now/in_london/$', 'now_in_london'),
)

Note that you don’t put a trailing dot (".") in the prefix, nor do you put a leading dot in the view strings. Django puts that in automatically.

With these two approaches in mind, which is better? It really depends on your personal coding style and needs.

Advantages of the string approach are:

• It’s more compact, because it doesn’t require you to import the view functions.
• It results in more readable and manageable URLconfs if your view functions are spread across several different Python modules.

Advantages of the function object approach are:

• It allows for easy “wrapping” of view functions. See “Wrapping view functions” later in this chapter.
• It’s more “Pythonic” — that is, it’s more in line with Python traditions, such as passing functions as objects.

Both approaches are valid, and you can even mix them within the same URLconf. The choice is yours.

Multiple view prefixes

In practice, if you use the string technique, you’ll probably end up mixing views to the point where the views in your URLconf won’t have a common prefix. However, you can still take advantage of the view prefix shortcut to remove duplication. Just add multiple patterns() objects together, like this:

Old:

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^/?$', 'mysite.views.archive_index'),
    (r'^(\d{4})/([a-z]{3})/$', 'mysite.views.archive_month'),
    (r'^tag/(\w+)/$', 'weblog.views.tag'),
)

New:

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *

urlpatterns = patterns('mysite.views',
    (r'^/?$', 'archive_index'),
    (r'^(\d{4})/([a-z]{3})/$','archive_month'),
)

urlpatterns += patterns('weblog.views',
    (r'^tag/(\w+)/$', 'tag'),
)

All the framework cares about is that there’s a module-level variable called urlpatterns. This variable can be constructed dynamically, as we do in this example.

Named groups

In all of our URLconf examples so far, we’ve used simple, non-named regular-expression groups — i.e., we put parentheses around parts of the URL we wanted to capture, and Django passes that captured text to the view function as a positional argument. In more advanced usage, it’s possible to use named regular-expression groups to capture URL bits and pass them as keyword arguments to a view.

def sell(item, price, quantity):
    print "Selling %s unit(s) of %s at %s" % (quantity, item, price)

sell('Socks', '$2.50', 6)

sell(item='Socks', price='$2.50', quantity=6)
sell(item='Socks', quantity=6, price='$2.50')
sell(price='$2.50', item='Socks', quantity=6)
sell(price='$2.50', quantity=6, item='Socks')
sell(quantity=6, item='Socks', price='$2.50')
sell(quantity=6, price='$2.50', item='Socks')

In Python regular expressions, the syntax for named regular-expression groups is (?P<name>pattern), where name is the name of the group and pattern is some pattern to match.

Here’s an example URLconf that uses non-named groups:

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *
from mysite import views

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^articles/(\d{4})/$', views.year_archive),
    (r'^articles/(\d{4})/(\d{2})/$', views.month_archive),
)

Here’s the same URLconf, rewritten to use named groups:

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *
from mysite import views

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^articles/(?P<year>\d{4})/$', views.year_archive),
    (r'^articles/(?P<year>\d{4})/(?P<month>\d{2})/$', views.month_archive),
)

This accomplishes exactly the same thing as the previous example, with one subtle difference: The captured values are passed to view functions as keyword arguments rather than positional arguments.

For example, with non-named groups, a request to /articles/2006/03/ would result in a function call equivalent to this:

month_archive(request, '2006', '03')

With named groups, though, the same request would result in this function call:

month_archive(request, year='2006', month='03')

In practice, using named groups makes your URLconfs slightly more explicit and less prone to argument-order bugs — and you can reorder the arguments in your views’ function definitions. Following the above example, if we wanted to change the URLs to include the month before the year, and we were using non-named groups, we’d have to remember to change the order of arguments in the month_archive view. If we were using named groups, changing the order of the captured parameters in the URL would have no effect on the view.

Of course, the benefits of named groups come at the cost of brevity; some developers find the named-group syntax ugly and too verbose.

The matching/grouping algorithm

If you use both named and non-named groups in the same pattern in your URLconf, you should be aware of how Django treats this special case. Here’s the algorithm the URLconf parser follows, with respect to named groups vs. non-named groups in a regular expression:

• If there are any named arguments, it will use those, ignoring non-named arguments.
• Otherwise, it will pass all non-named arguments as positional arguments.
• In both cases, it will pass any extra keyword arguments as keyword arguments. See “Passing extra options to view functions” below.

Passing extra options to view functions

Sometimes you’ll find yourself writing view functions that are quite similar, with only a few small differences. For example, say you’ve got two views whose contents are identical except for the template they use:

# urls.py

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *
from mysite import views

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^foo/$', views.foo_view),
    (r'^bar/$', views.bar_view),
)

# views.py

from django.shortcuts import render_to_response
from mysite.models import MyModel

def foo_view(request):
    m_list = MyModel.objects.filter(is_new=True)
    return render_to_response('template1.html', {'m_list': m_list})

def bar_view(request):
    m_list = MyModel.objects.filter(is_new=True)
    return render_to_response('template2.html', {'m_list': m_list})

We’re repeating ourselves in this code, and that’s inelegant. At first, you may think to remove the redundancy by using the same view for both URLs, putting parenthesis around the URL to capture it, and checking the URL within the view to determine the template, like so:

# urls.py

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *
from mysite import views

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^(foo)/$', views.foobar_view),
    (r'^(bar)/$', views.foobar_view),
)

# views.py

from django.shortcuts import render_to_response
from mysite.models import MyModel

def foobar_view(request, url):
    m_list = MyModel.objects.filter(is_new=True)
    if url == 'foo':
        template_name = 'template1.html'
    elif url == 'bar':
        template_name = 'template2.html'
    return render_to_response(template_name, {'m_list': m_list})

The problem with that solution, though, is that it couples your URLs to your code. If you decide to rename /foo/ to /fooey/, you’ll have to remember to change the view code.

The elegant solution involves a feature called extra URLconf options. Each pattern in a URLconf may include a third item — a dictionary of keyword arguments to pass to the view function.

With this in mind, we can rewrite our ongoing example like this:

# urls.py

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *
from mysite import views

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^foo/$', views.foobar_view, {'template_name': 'template1.html'}),
    (r'^bar/$', views.foobar_view, {'template_name': 'template2.html'}),
)

# views.py

from django.shortcuts import render_to_response
from mysite.models import MyModel

def foobar_view(request, template_name):
    m_list = MyModel.objects.filter(is_new=True)
    return render_to_response(template_name, {'m_list': m_list})

As you can see, the URLconf in this example specifies template_name in the URLconf. The view function treats it as just another parameter.

This extra URLconf options technique is a nice way of sending additional information to your view functions with minimal fuss. As such, it’s used by a couple of Django’s bundled applications, most notably its generic views system, which we’ll cover in Chapter 9.

Here are a couple of ideas on how you can use the extra URLconf options technique in your own projects:

/mydata/jan/01/
/mydata/jan/02/
/mydata/jan/03/
# ...
/mydata/dec/30/
/mydata/dec/31/

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^mydata/(?P<month>\w{3})/(?P<day>\d\d)/$', views.my_view),
)

def my_view(request, month, day):
    # ....

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^mydata/birthday/$', views.my_view, {'month': 'jan', 'day': '06'}),
    (r'^mydata/(?P<month>\w{3})/(?P<day>\d\d)/$', views.my_view),
)

def say_hello(person_name):
    print 'Hello, %s' % person_name

def say_goodbye(person_name):
    print 'Goodbye, %s' % person_name

def greet(person_name, greeting):
    print '%s, %s' % (greeting, person_name)

# urls.py

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *
from mysite import views

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^events/$', views.event_list),
    (r'^blog/entries/$', views.entry_list),
)

# views.py

from django.shortcuts import render_to_response
from mysite.models import Event, BlogEntry

def event_list(request):
    obj_list = Event.objects.all()
    return render_to_response('mysite/event_list.html', {'event_list': obj_list})

def entry_list(request):
    obj_list = BlogEntry.objects.all()
    return render_to_response('mysite/blogentry_list.html', {'entry_list': obj_list})

# urls.py

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *
from mysite import models, views

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^events/$', views.object_list, {'model': models.Event}),
    (r'^blog/entries/$', views.object_list, {'model': models.BlogEntry}),
)

# views.py

from django.shortcuts import render_to_response

def object_list(request, model):
    obj_list = model.objects.all()
    template_name = 'mysite/%s_list.html' % model.__name__.lower()
    return render_to_response(template_name, {'object_list': obj_list})

def my_view(request, template_name):
    var = do_something()
    return render_to_response(template_name, {'var': var})

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^mydata/(?P<id>\d+)/$', views.my_view, {'id': 3}),
)

Using default view arguments

Another convenient trick is to specify default parameters for a view’s arguments. This tells the view which value to use for a parameter by default if none is specified.

For example:

# urls.py

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^blog/$', views.page),
    (r'^blog/page(?P<num>\d+)/$', views.page),
)

# views.py

def page(request, num="1"):
    # Output the appropriate page of blog entries, according to num.
    # ...

Here, both URL patterns point to the same view — views.page — but the first pattern doesn’t capture anything from the URL. If the first pattern matches, the page() function will use its default argument for num, "1". If the second pattern matches, page() will use whatever num value was captured by the regex.

It’s common to use this technique in conjunction with configuration options, as explained above. This example makes a slight improvement to the example in the Giving a view configuration options section by providing a default value for template_name:

def my_view(request, template_name='mysite/my_view.html'):
    var = do_something()
    return render_to_response(template_name, {'var': var})

Special-casing views

Sometimes you’ll have a pattern in your URLconf that handles a large set of URLs but you’ll need to special-case one of them. In this case, take advantage of the linear way a URLconf is processed and put the special case first.

For example, the “add an object” pages in Django’s admin site are represented by this URLconf line:

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    # ...
    ('^([^/]+)/([^/]+)/add/$', 'django.contrib.admin.views.main.add_stage'),
    # ...
)

This matches URLs such as /myblog/entries/add/ and /auth/groups/add/. However, the “add” page for a user object (/auth/user/add/) is a special case — it doesn’t display all of the form fields, it displays two password fields, etc. We could solve this by special-casing in the view, like so:

def add_stage(request, app_label, model_name):
    if app_label == 'auth' and model_name == 'user':
        # do special-case code
    else:
        # do normal code

…but that’s inelegant for a reason we’ve touched on multiple times in this chapter: it puts URL logic in the view. As a more elegant solution, we can take advantage of the fact that URLconfs are processed in order from top to bottom:

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    # ...
    ('^auth/user/add/$', 'django.contrib.admin.views.auth.user_add_stage'),
    ('^([^/]+)/([^/]+)/add/$', 'django.contrib.admin.views.main.add_stage'),
    # ...
)

With this in place, a request to /auth/user/add/ will be handled by the user_add_stage view. Although that URL matches the second pattern, it matches the top one first. (This is short-circuit logic.)

Notes on capturing text in URLs

Each captured argument is sent to the view as a plain Python string, regardless of what sort of match the regular expression makes. For example, in this URLconf line:

(r'^articles/(?P<year>\d{4})/$', views.year_archive),

…the year argument to views.year_archive() will be a string, not an integer, even though the \d{4} will only match integer strings.

This is important to keep in mind when you’re writing view code. Many built-in Python functions are fussy (and rightfully so) about accepting only objects of a certain type. A common error is to attempt to create a datetime.date object with string values instead of integer values:

>>> import datetime
>>> datetime.date('1993', '7', '9')
Traceback (most recent call last):
    ...
TypeError: an integer is required
>>> datetime.date(1993, 7, 9)
datetime.date(1993, 7, 9)

Translated to a URLconf and view, the error looks like this:

# urls.py

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^articles/(\d{4})/(\d{2})/(\d{2})/$', views.day_archive),
)

# views.py

import datetime

def day_archive(request, year, month, day)
    # The following statement raises a TypeError!
    date = datetime.date(year, month, day)

Instead, day_archive() can be written correctly like this:

def day_archive(request, year, month, day)
    date = datetime.date(int(year), int(month), int(day))

Note that int() itself raises a ValueError when you pass it a string that is not comprised solely of digits, but we’re avoiding that error in this case because the regular expression in our URLconf has ensured that only strings containing digits are passed to the view function.

What the URLconf searches against

When a request comes in, Django tries to match the URLconf patterns against the requested URL, as a normal Python string (not as a Unicode string). This does not include GET or POST parameters, or the domain name. It also does not include the leading slash, because every URL has a leading slash.

For example, in a request to http://www.example.com/myapp/, Django will try to match myapp/.

In a request to http://www.example.com/myapp/?page=3, Django will try to match myapp/.

The request method — e.g., POST, GET, HEAD — is not taken into account when traversing the URLconf. In other words, all request methods will be routed to the same function for the same URL. It’s the responsibility of a view function to perform branching based on request method.

How captured parameters work with include()

An included URLconf receives any captured parameters from parent URLconfs. For example:

# root urls.py

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^(?P<username>\w+)/blog/', include('foo.urls.blog')),
)

# foo/urls/blog.py

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^$', 'foo.views.blog_index'),
    (r'^archive/$', 'foo.views.blog_archive'),
)

In this example, the captured username variable is passed to the included URLconf and, hence, to every view function within that URLconf.

Note that the captured parameters will always be passed to every line in the included URLconf, regardless of whether the line’s view actually accepts those parameters as valid. For this reason, this technique is only useful if you’re certain that every view in the the included URLconf accepts the parameters you’re passing.

How extra URLconf options work with include()

Similarly, you can pass extra URLconf options to include(), just as you can pass extra URLconf options to a normal view — as a dictionary. When you do this, each line in the included URLconf will be passed the extra options.

For example, these two URLconf sets are functionally identical:

Set one:

# urls.py

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^blog/', include('inner'), {'blogid': 3}),
)

# inner.py

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^archive/$', 'mysite.views.archive'),
    (r'^about/$', 'mysite.views.about'),
    (r'^rss/$', 'mysite.views.rss'),
)

Set two:

# urls.py

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^blog/', include('inner')),
)

# inner.py

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^archive/$', 'mysite.views.archive', {'blogid': 3}),
    (r'^about/$', 'mysite.views.about', {'blogid': 3}),
    (r'^rss/$', 'mysite.views.rss', {'blogid': 3}),
)

Note that extra options will always be passed to every line in the included URLconf, regardless of whether the line’s view actually accepts those options as valid. For this reason, this technique is only useful if you’re certain that every view in the the included URLconf accepts the extra options you’re passing.