Question

# urls.py
site_media = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), 'site_media'
)

urlpatterns = patterns('',
     (r'^site_media/(?P<path>.*)$', 'django.views.static.serve', 
                                     {'document_root': site_media}),
)

I have problems to understand the meaning of the expression used in above statement.

'^site_media/(?P<path>.*)$'

What does it really mean?

Thank you

// ========== Updated based on comments ==============

Reference: Name Groups.

In Python regular expressions, the syntax for named regular-expression
groups is (?P<name>pattern), where name is the name of the group and
pattern is some pattern to match.

Comparison:

Method 1>

(r'^articles/(?P<year>\d{4})/(?P<month>\d{2})/$', 'news.views.month_archive'),

A request to /articles/2005/03/ would call the function

news.views.month_archive(request, year='2005', month='03'),

Method 2>

(r'^articles/(\d{4})/(\d{2})/$', 'news.views.month_archive'),

A request to /articles/2005/03/ would call the function

news.views.month_archive(request, '2005', '03').

Answer 1

urls are pretty well explained in the docs