Question

I am doing something like this in myproject.myapp.urls:

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *

urlpatterns = patterns('myproject.myapp.views',
    (ur'^$', 'index'),
    (ur'^browse/$', 'browse'),
    (ur'^request/new/$', 'new_request'),
    (ur'^(?P<url_key>[-a-zA-Z0-9]+)/$', 'view1'),
    (ur'^(?P<url_key>[-a-zA-Z0-9]+)/asdf$', 'view2'),
    (ur'^(?P<url_key>[-a-zA-Z0-9]+)/qwer$', 'view3'),
    (ur'^(?P<url_key>[-a-zA-Z0-9]+)/zxcv$', 'view4'),
    (ur'^(?P<url_key>[-a-zA-Z0-9]+)/tyui$', 'view5'),
    (ur'^(?P<url_key>[-a-zA-Z0-9]+)/ghjk$', 'view6'),
    (ur'^(?P<url_key>[-a-zA-Z0-9]+)/bnm/more-looong-url/$', 'view7'),
    ...
)

I’ve tried to refactor above rules and define them in another file urls2.py like this:

(ur'^(?P<url_key>[-a-zA-Z0-9]+)/', include('myproject.myapp.urls2')),

but it seems to cause problems with unit tests including urlresolvers.

Is there better way to “refactor” the common part of regular expression (<url_key>) here?

Answer 1

I don’t think you can do what you are trying to do with this line:

(ur'^(?P<url_key>[-a-zA-Z0-9]+)/', include('myproject.myapp.urls2'))

What view is the url_key parameter going to be passed to?

I’m not sure why you want to refactor the urlpatterns to begin with, but maybe this would be better?:

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *

URL_KEY = ur'^(?P<url_key>[-a-zA-Z0-9]+)'

urlpatterns = patterns('myproject.myapp.views',
    (ur'^$', 'index'),
    (ur'^browse/$', 'browse'),
    (ur'^request/new/$', 'new_request'),
    (URL_KEY+ur'/$', 'view1'),
    (URL_KEY+ur'/asdf$', 'view2'),
    (URL_KEY+ur'/qwer$', 'view3'),
    ...etc
)