Handling Multiple Views/ Multiple Urls in Django

Question

I'm having the 404 error when trying to handle a view that is not related to the main page. For example, if I initially start at the main page home, and want to navigate to another page called, otherpage, I receive a 404 otherpage.html not found.

The way I'm doing is based off intuition. So if there's a better way to do this, please mention it:

in the file:

prd/
   views.py
   url.py
   otherstuffthatshouldbehere.py..

I have views.py (this is where I think the error is):

from django.shortcuts import render

def home(request):
    context = {}
    template = "index.html"
    return render(request, template, context)

def otherpage(request):
    context = {}
    template = "otherpage.html"
    return render(request, template, context)

Then urls.py:

from django.conf.urls import patterns, include, url
from django.contrib import admin

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    url(r'^$', 'prd.views.home', name='home'),
    url(r'^$', 'prd.views.otherpage', name='otherpage'),

    url(r'^admin/', include(admin.site.urls)),
)

This returns a 404 for the otherpage.html. I have the template directory working fine. But how do I go about handling multiple views?

EDIT:

Upon adding:

url(r'^otherpage$', 'prd.views.otherpage', name='otherpage'),

I received this error:

Using the URLconf defined in prd.urls, Django tried these URL patterns, in this order:
^$ [name='home']
^about$ [name='about']
^projects$ [name='projects']
^admin/
The current URL, about.html, didn't match any of these.

shuttle87 · Accepted Answer · 2014-10-12 17:15:08Z

2

The urlpatterns starts at the top and then goes down until it matches a URL based on the regex. In order for Django to serve up the page located at otherpage.html there has to be a URL defined in urlpatterns that matches otherpage.html otherwise you will get the 404.

In this case you have:

url(r'^$', 'prd.views.home', name='home'),
url(r'^$', 'prd.views.otherpage', name='otherpage'),

Note that nothing will ever get to otherpage here because home has the same pattern (regex) and will therefore always match first. You want to have a different URL for both those so that you can differentiate between them. Perhaps you could do something like:

url(r'^$', 'prd.views.home', name='home'),
url(r'^otherpage.html$', 'prd.views.otherpage', name='otherpage'),

After making this change you now have a match for otherpage and hopefully no more 404.

EDIT:

url(r'^otherpage.html$', 'prd.views.otherpage', name='otherpage'),

This matches www.example.com/otherpage.html but it will not match www.example.com/otherpage

To match www.example.com/otherpage you need to use:

url(r'^otherpage$', 'prd.views.otherpage', name='otherpage'),

Note the difference in the regex, there's no .html here. The regex matches exactly what you put in it.

edited Oct 12, 2014 at 17:15

answered Oct 12, 2014 at 17:06

shuttle87

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3 Comments

nonamorando Over a year ago

Oh that's neat. But now I have the error of Using the URLconf defined in project.urls, Django tried these URL patterns. (I'll add to the main question)

shuttle87 Over a year ago

@WillCampbell I made an edit that hopefully explains the cause of that issue.

nonamorando Over a year ago

Awesome, that helped immensely. Thanks!

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