what is reverse() in Django

Question

When I read django code sometimes, I see in some templates reverse(). I am not quite sure what this is but it is used together with HttpResponseRedirect. How and when is this reverse() supposed to be used?

It would nice if someone gave an answer with some examples...

Answer 1

Django provides tools for performing URL reversing that match the different layers where URLs are needed: In templates: Using the url template tag. In Python code: Using the reverse() function. In higher level code related to handling of URLs of Django model instances: The get_absolute_url() method.

Eg. in templates (url tag)

<a href="{% url'news-year-archive' 2012 %}">2012 Archive</a>

Eg. in python code (using the reverse function)

return HttpResponseRedirect(reverse('news-year-archive', args=(year,)))