Django: formats of urlpatterns in urls.py

Question

I noticed that in Django there are two formats of urlpatterns in file urls.py:

urlpatterns = [
    url(...),
    url(...),
]
         


        

Answer 1

In Django 1.8+, urlpatterns should simply be a list of url()s. This new syntax actually works in 1.7 as well.

urlpatterns = [
    url(...),
    url(...),
]

The old syntax using pattern is deprecated in Django 1.8, and is removed in Django 1.10.

urlpatterns = pattern('',
    url(...),
    url(...),
)

With the old syntax, you could provide a prefix. The example given in the docs is

urlpatterns = patterns('news.views',
    url(r'^articles/([0-9]{4})/$', 'year_archive'),
    url(r'^articles/([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{2})/$', 'month_archive'),
    url(r'^articles/([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{2})/([0-9]+)/$', 'article_detail'),
)

However, using strings arguments for the view is now deprecated as well, and you should provide the callable instead.