Django’s template system provides a powerful {% url %} tag that allows you to refer to URLs by their name instead of hardcoding the URLs. However, sometimes you need to add additional parameters to these URLs dynamically within the template. Fortunately, the url template tag supports adding parameters in a clean way.
The Basics of the url Template Tag
First, a quick refresher on using the basics of the url template tag in Django templates. You refer to the URL by its name, as specified in your urls.py, like so:
{% url 'my-view-name' %}This will output the full URL path to the view named my-view-name.
Additionally, you can store the output in a variable instead of rendering it, like this:
{% url 'my-view-name' as my_view_url %}Then later you can output {{ my_view_url }} to render the URL.
Adding Get Parameters
To add GET parameters to the URL, you specify them as keyword arguments within the url tag.
For example:
{% url 'products' category='electronics' %}This would output a URL path with ?category=electronics appended. Multiple parameters are separated by an ampersand, like a standardURL query string.
You can also use template variables instead of hardcoding values, like:
{% url 'products' category=product.category %}Verifying Parameter Types
One issue to watch out for when dynamically adding parameters is that the framework will not automatically typecast strings to integers or other types. For example, if your view expects an integer product ID, you need to be sure to convert it in the template, like:
{% url 'product' id=product.id|stringformat:"i" %} Here stringformat:"i" renders the integer properly before passing it along.
Building URLs Step-by-Step
At times you might need to build a complex URL that requires adding different pieces step-by-step. To do this, you can set template variables to the url tag output, like:
{% url 'products' as base_url %}
{% with category=category|urlencode %}
{% url 'products' category=category as url_with_category %}
{% endwith %}
{% if filter %}
{% with filter=filter|urlencode %}
{% url 'products' category=category filter=filter as final_url %}
{% endwith %}
{% else %}
{% set final_url=url_with_category %}
{% endif %}This allows you to incrementally construct the finished URL by chaining together url tags referencing the last output.
Passing URL Parts as Arguments
You can also pass URL pieces into a template as function arguments using the with template tag.
For example:
{% with category=electronics filter=price_low_to_high %}
{% url 'products' category=category filter=filter %}
{% endwith %}This allows cleaner code when you need to reuse URL parameters in multiple places.
Conclusion
In summary, Django‘s url template tag provides everything you need to construct complex URLs with parameters right within your templates. By leveraging template variables, the with tag, and chaining together multiple url definitions, you can build URLs reflecting the exact state of the template without redundancy.
The next time you find yourself needing to add dynamic parameters to your Django URLs within a template, hopefully these patterns give you some new tools to keep your code DRY and clean! Let me know in the comments if you have any other tips or tricks for working with the url template tag.
