Django Class Based View CreateView url resolution - django

Question

I am fairly new to CBV and am trying to make sense of it. I copied the following example from the django doc page:
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/class-based-views/generic-editing/
models.py
from django.core.urlresolvers import reverse
from django.db import models
class Author(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=200)
def get_absolute_url(self):
return reverse('author-detail', kwargs={'pk': self.pk})
views.py
from django.views.generic.edit import CreateView, UpdateView, DeleteView
from django.core.urlresolvers import reverse_lazy
from myapp.models import Author
class AuthorCreate(CreateView):
model = Author
fields = ['name']
class AuthorUpdate(UpdateView):
model = Author
fields = ['name']
class AuthorDelete(DeleteView):
model = Author
success_url = reverse_lazy('author-list')
urls.py
from django.conf.urls import patterns, url
from myapp.views import AuthorCreate, AuthorUpdate, AuthorDelete
urlpatterns = patterns('',
# ...
url(r'author/add/$', AuthorCreate.as_view(), name='author_add'),
url(r'author/(?P<pk>\d+)/$', AuthorUpdate.as_view(), name='author_update'),
url(r'author/(?P<pk>\d+)/delete/$', AuthorDelete.as_view(), name='author_delete'),
)
At author/add/ I indeed get the form, but when I enter the string I get the following error:
Reverse for 'author-detail' with arguments '()' and keyword arguments '{'pk': 3}' not found.
It seems like the new entry has been added to the database, but it could not resolve the URL for the next view?
So I am puzzled, what is this get_absolute_url() object's method supposed to do, how does it work (I could not grasp it from the django doc) and how do I fix the issue?
Thanks.
EDIT 1: added the template:
author_form.html:
<form action="" method="post">{% csrf_token %}
{{ form.as_p }}
<input type="submit" value="Create" />
</form>

Answer 1

By default, when a new model is created django will redirect you to a models absolute url as returned by the get_absolute_url method. In your example you would need to add a url with the name author-detail that accepts a pk keyword argument.
urlpatterns = patterns('',
# ...
url(r'author/(?P<pk>\d+)/$', AuthorDetail.as_view(), name='author-detail'),
)
Note the name of the url matches the name of the view in the get_absolute_url method.
Use it in your templates:
{% for author in authors %}
{{author.name}}
{% endfor %}