How to specify URLs in Django templates?

Question

Question is: What's the right way of writing URL in Django templates?

If I write them explicitly (like this):

some_template.html

{% extends "base.html" %}
{% block someblock %}
    <a href="/some_url">Anchor</a>
{% endblock someblock %}

and then I decide to change my URL scheme I will have to change both - template and urls.py module (Seems this way conflicts with the DRY principles)

Another way is to use variables (like this):

some_template.html

{% extends "base.html" %}
{% block someblock %}
    <a href="{{ url_var }}">Anchor</a>
{% endblock someblock %}


views.py

def some_url (request):
    return HttpResponse('Hello, world!')

def another_url (request):
    return render_to_response('some_template.html', {'url_var': reverse('some_url')}

But in this case if I use template inheritance I have to specify in context ALL of the url variables (also for the parent templates). Probably it is not a good way too.

So what is the decision?

Answer 1

Use named urls and the {% url %} tag.

urlpatterns = [
    #...
    url(r'^articles/$', views.archive, name='news-archive'),
    #...
]

{% url 'news-archive' %}