Django Routing 101

Something I’ve taken a while to get under my fingers is Django’s URL routing conventions. Here’s a brief summary.

At the root of your app or apps, you’ll find a file like this.

# urls.py

from django.urls import path

from . import views

urlpatterns = [
    path("articles/2003/", views.special_case_2003),
    path("articles/<int:year>/", views.year_archive),
    path("articles/<int:year>/<int:month>/", views.month_archive),
]

On a bigger app, these path calls might look like this:

    path("api/posts/", include(posts_urls.urlpatterns)),

Which are include-ing from other nested urls.py. I think this convention is a little less direct than Rails’ giant routes.rb, but it also keeps the URLs in nice buckets with the rest of their supporting code.