Django does not match urls - regex

Question

I've been working on a django web app (using Django 1.3), a web catalogue of products, and it was working fine until I was asked to add a custom admin site. I'm fully aware of the Django admin site, but the client is very old-fashioned, and is tech-ignorant so I have to make a "for dummies" version admin site. The root urlconf:
from django.conf.urls.defaults import *
from django.views.generic import TemplateView
from store.models import Category
from django.contrib import admin
admin.autodiscover()
urlpatterns = patterns('',
url(r'^admin/', include(admin.site.urls)),
url(r'^^$', TemplateView.as_view(
template_name='homepage.html',
get_context_data=lambda: {
'crumb': 'home',
'category_list':Category.objects.all()
}
),
name='home'),
url(r'^favicon\.ico$', 'django.views.generic.simple.redirect_to', {'url': '/static/img/favicon.ico'}),
url(r'^store/', include('store.urls', app_name='store', namespace='store')),
)
And the urlconf for the store app:
from django.conf import settings
from django.conf.urls.defaults import *
from store import views
urlpatterns = patterns ('',
url(r'^category/$', views.get_brands, name='get_brands'),
url(r'^(\w+)/$', views.GalleryView.as_view(), name='gallery'),
url(r'^(\w+)/(\w+)/$', views.GalleryView.as_view(), name='gallery'),
)
and the original views:
from django.http import Http404
from django.shortcuts import render, get_object_or_404
from django.views.generic import ListView
from store.models import Category, Brand, Product
def get_brands(request):
q = request.GET.get('q')
if q is not None:
category = get_object_or_404(Category, slug__iexact=q)
try:
brands = category.brands.all()
except:
brands = []
template = 'infobox.html'
data = {
'category': category,
'brands': brands,
}
return render( request, template, data )
class GalleryView(ListView):
context_object_name = 'product_list'
template_name = 'store/gallery.html'
def get_queryset(self):
self.category = get_object_or_404(Category, slug__iexact=self.args[0])
try:
brand = Brand.objects.get(slug__iexact = self.args[1])
self.brand_name = brand.name
except:
#no brand is specified, show products with no brand
if self.category.category_products.filter(brand__isnull=True):
#if there are products with no brand, return those
return self.category.category_products.filter(brand__isnull=True)
else:
#if all products have a brand, return the products of the first brand
all = self.category.brands.all()
if all:
brand = all[0]
self.brand_name = brand.name
return brand.brand_products.all()
else:
raise Http404
else:
#brand is specified, show its products
return Product.objects.filter(category=self.category, brand=brand)
def get_context_data(self, **kwargs):
context = super(GalleryView, self).get_context_data(**kwargs)
category = self.category
category_brands = self.category.brands.all()
context['category_list'] = Category.objects.all()
context['category'] = category
context['crumb'] = category.name
context['category_brands'] = category_brands
try:
context['brand'] = self.brand_name
except:
context['brand'] = None
return context
Now, my custom admin app was working fine on my local dev environment, but when I added the new urls and views to prod, Django doesn't seem to match any of the new urls. The original views and urls still work, but none of the new urls get matched and I just keep getting a 404 Not Found error.
The updated urlconf:
from django.conf import settings
from django.conf.urls.defaults import patterns, include, url
from django.contrib.auth.decorators import login_required
from store import views
admin_urls = patterns ('',
url(r'^$', login_required(views.AdminIndexView.as_view()), name='admin_index'),
url(r'^add/(\w+)/$', login_required(views.AdminAddView.as_view()), name='admin_add'),
)
urlpatterns = patterns ('',
url(r'^category/$', views.get_brands, name='get_brands'),
url(r'^(\w+)/$', views.GalleryView.as_view(), name='gallery'),
url(r'^(\w+)/(\w+)/$', views.GalleryView.as_view(), name='gallery'),
url(r'^login/$', views.admin_login, name='login'),
url(r'^logout/$', views.admin_logout, name='logout'),
url(r'^logout/success/$', views.admin_logout_success, name='logout_success'),
url(r'^test/', views.test, name='test'),
url(r'^admin/', include(admin_urls, namespace='admin')),
url(r'^ajax/$', views.ajax_request, name='ajax_request'),
)
Note that not even the simple '/store/test/' url does not get matched. I'm not really sure why Django isn't matching my urls, and any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

I'm not exactly sure what was happening since all of my templates linked to other pages using the {% url %} tag, but I think the reason my urls were getting muddled up was because I was using the r'^(\w+)/$' regex, so it was matching any word. I simply moved the urlconfs with the (\w+) rule to the bottom of urls.py, and refactored them to be a little more specific and they were gold again.
The updated urlconf:
from django.conf import settings
from django.conf.urls.defaults import patterns, include, url
from django.contrib.auth.decorators import login_required
from store import views
admin_urls = patterns ('',
)
urlpatterns = patterns ('',
url(r'^category/$', views.get_brands, name='get_brands'),
url(r'^(\w+)/$', views.GalleryView.as_view(), name='gallery'),
url(r'^(\w+)/(\w+)/$', views.GalleryView.as_view(), name='gallery'),
url(r'^login/$', views.admin_login, name='login'),
url(r'^logout/$', views.admin_logout, name='logout'),
url(r'^logout/success/$', views.admin_logout_success, name='logout_success'),
url(r'^ajax/$', views.ajax_request, name='ajax_request'),
url(r'^administration/$', login_required(views.AdminIndexView.as_view()), name='admin_index'),
url(r'^administration/add/(\w+)/$', login_required(views.AdminAddView.as_view()), name='admin_add'),
)

Answer 2

As you mentioned in the comments, removing login_required fixes the problem. Here's what the django docs have to say about the decorator:
login_required() does the following:
If the user isn’t logged in, redirect to settings.LOGIN_URL, passing the current absolute path in the query string. Example:
/accounts/login/?next=/polls/3/.
If the user is logged in, execute the view normally
[...] Note that if you don't specify the login_url parameter, you'll
need to map the appropriate Django view to settings.LOGIN_URL.
In other words, it goes to a default url you can override in settings.LOGIN_URL.
Now here's what I think happened - I think you defined your own login here:
url(r'^login/$', views.admin_login, name='login'),
And because the login_required in the new urls pointed at the default url, which doesn't exist it returned 404. However, when you configured the login_required views after your other urls:
url(r'^login/$', views.admin_login, name='login'),
...
url(r'^administration/$', login_required(views.AdminIndexView.as_view()), name='admin_index'),
url(r'^administration/add/(\w+)/$', login_required(views.AdminAddView.as_view()), name='admin_add'),
it worked. Why is that? You didn't overrid LOGIN_URL here right? But you sort of did - because at this point, you redefined the namespace 'login' to point to your own view. Now this isn't mentioned anywhere in the docs, but it makes sense, and looking at the default admin templates you can see this is the namespace being used.
Does that make sense to you?