Question

Why did the django core developers allow the url templatetag to point directly to a django view function? (reference – https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/templates/builtins/#url)

{% load url from future %}

{# 1st method: pointing to a view function #}
{% url 'app_views.client' %}

{# 2nd method: pointing to a named url #}
{% url 'myapp:view-name' %}

One can already name the url in urls.py and hence use the 2nd method to point to a specific url. It doesn’t feel right to allow developers to actually reference a view function directly from the template.

Does anyone know why this decision was made?

Answer 1

Passing a dotted view function name to the {% url %} template tag is simply the form the template tag took in the earlier days of Django, before you could name URLs. It’s still supported, though as you point out, you probably wouldn’t use it in a modern application.