Should every django app within a project have it's own urls.py?

Question

I am working on a django project which will contain several apps. Each app will have their own set of models and views.

Should each app also define their own url's with a urls.py or maybe a function. What is the best practice for defining urls of apps within a django project, and integrating these urls with the main urls.py (root url conf) ?

Answer 1

It depends. If you're dealing with a tiny website with one app, you can keep all the expressions in the same urls.py.

However, when you're dealing with a more complicated site with truly separate apps, I prefer the following structure:

• myapp
  • admin.py
  • forms.py
  • models.py
  • urls.py
  • views.py
• manage.py
• settings.py
• urls.py

Don't forget each folder needs it's own __ init__.py

# urls.py from django.conf.urls.defaults import * from django.contrib import admin  admin.autodiscover()  urlpatterns = patterns('',     # Notice the expression does not end in $,      # that happens at the myapp/url.py level     (r'^myapp/', include('myproject.myapp.urls')), )  # myapp/urls.py from django.conf.urls.defaults import *  urlpatterns = patterns('myproject.myapp.views',     (r'^$', 'default_view',     (r'^something/$', 'something_view', ) 

You also may want to look at Class-based Generic Views

Answer 2

If your app is going to display anything to the user with its own url pattern, it should probably have its own urls.py file. So in your base urls file, you'd have something in your urlpatterns like url(r'', include('path.to.app.urls')). Then your app's urls.py file would have a pattern like url(r'^$', 'path.to.app.views.view').