Question

I’m new to django. The question I have is simple, but I couldn’t really figure out what I needed from tutorials I have found online, nor in a book I have purchased on django.

I am writing a website to house an online comic. Let’s say the url is:

http://localhost:8000/

I want a request for the base url to go to the most recent comic. If there are 13 comics, then I want a user requesting the above url to be sent to:

http://localhost:8000/13

At the same time, I want a user that types in http://localhost:8000/13 to go to the url specified. How would I do this?

Answer 1

For that you will need two url patterns which will map to two views. The first url is for the home page (http://localhost:8000/), and the second url is to see a specific comic (http://localhost:8000/<comic_id>). The first url however should redirect users to the latest comic using HttpResponseRedirect.

# assuming comic model similar to
class Comic(models.Model):
    created = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
    # other fields...

# urlpatterns
url(r'^$', 'index', name='index'),
url(r'^(?P<comic_id>\d+)/$', 'comic', name='comic'),

# views
def index(request):
    latest_comic = Comic.objects.order_by('-created')[0]
    # or as suggested by Alasdair's comment
    # latest_comic = Comic.objects.latest('created')
    return HttpResponseRedirect(reverse('comic', kwargs={'comic_id':latest_comic.pk}))

def comic(request, comic_id):
    comic = get_object_or_404(Comic, pk=comic_id)
    # ...