Django HttpResponseRedirect

Question

I have created a basic contact form, and when the user submits information, it should redirect to the "Thank You" page.

views.py:

def contact(request):
    # if no errors...
    return HttpResponseRedirect('/thanks/')

urls.py:

(r'^contact/$', contact),
(r'^contact/thanks/$', contact_thanks),

Both pages work at the hard-coded URL. However, when I submit the form on /contact/ it redirects to /contact (no ending slash), which is a nonexistent page (either a 404 or an error page telling me I need a slash).

What is the reason it not correctly redirecting, and how can I fix this?

UPDATE: the return HttpResponseRedirect('/contact/thanks/') is what I now have, but the problem is that the submit button (using POST) does not redirect to the URL -- it doesn't redirect at all.

Answer 1

It's not the POST button that should redirect, but the view.

If not differently specified, the form (the HTML form tag) POSTs to the same URL. If the form is on /contact/, it POSTs on /contact/ (with or without slash, it's the same).

It's in the view that you should redirect to thanks. From the doc:

def contact(request):
    if request.method == 'POST': # If the form has been submitted...
        form = ContactForm(request.POST) # A form bound to the POST data
        if form.is_valid(): # All validation rules pass
            # Process the data in form.cleaned_data
            # ...
            return HttpResponseRedirect('/thanks/') # Redirect after POST
    else:
        form = ContactForm() # An unbound form

    return render_to_response('contact.html', {
        'form': form,
    })

Change /thanks/ to /contact/thanks/ and you're done.

Answer 2

All of the responses are correct but a better approach is to give names to your URLs in urls.py and hint to them in views with reverse function (instead of hard coding URL in views).

urls.py:

(r'^contact/$', contact, name='contact'),
(r'^contact/thanks/$', contact_thanks, name='thanks'),

And hint them in views.py like this:

from django.urls import reverse

return HttpResponseRedirect(reverse('app_name:thanks'))

This is better for future approach and follow the DRY principle of Django.