Create a View

Hi @iwatts and thanks for noting this. I just went to double-check and having the / in your empty path does prevent it from loading correctly, both on Django 3 as well as Django 2.2.16, so there’s no change regarding the Django version, but it just doesn’t work.

So let’s explore this a bit more :)

Reproducing the Error

I gave it a spin with a small contrived example project, where I set the urlpatterns like so:

urlpatterns = [
    path('/', views.index),
    path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
]

And here’s the error message that Django sent me as a response when trying to access the base URL at http://127.0.0.1:8000/ as well as http://127.0.0.1:8000:

Page not found (404)
Request Method: GET
Request URL:    http://127.0.0.1:8000/

Using the URLconf defined in mysite.urls, Django tried
these URL patterns, in this order:

/
admin/

The empty path didn't match any of these.

Django’s feedback in this case is maybe slightly confusing, but it’s really all in there. :) Django is telling us that it looked at the two existing path configurations, / and admin/, but that The empty path didn’t match any of these.

The Empty Path

When you go to a URL, such as http://127.0.0.1:8000/, the / at the end isn’t a text part of the URL. Instead it has the meaning that it separates URL path components.

Django knows that and strips these off, and doesn’t consider them as part of a path component that you are defining in your path() calls.

Which means that if you type http://127.0.0.1:8000/, Django receives as a string component to process further only the stuff that comes after the final /. In this case, that is nothing, or rather, an empty string ''.

A Hacky Experiment

So what would you need to do in order to match a path configuration that looks like this:

path('/', views.index)

What URL would you need to type into your browser to make Django match it? Give it a try and report back here :)

Yeah - just tried it and you need:

127.0.0.1:8000/projects//

I just presumed it was all a string - good to know :-)

Nice! Good work! 🙌 :)

And just as a conclusion for anyone reading this down the road: Don’t put the slash character into your empty path, just leave it as an empty string instead:

path('', views.index)

I made it to this part, but am getting an error not sure how to fix.

When I enter:

python manage.py runserver

I get this error:

 File "C:\PYTHON-TRAIN\zoo\django-portfolio\portfolio\urls.py", line 21, in <module>
    path('projects/', include(projects.urls)),
NameError: name 'projects' is not defined

Here is the code I have in the portfolio\urls.py file:

from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import include, path

urlpatterns = [
    path('admin/',    admin.site.urls),
    path('projects/', include(projects.urls)),
    ]

@KatMac What’s your directory tree? Is there a projects folder in your django-portfolio/ parent directory? Perhaps, you misspelled the name project without the s at the end?

It was a typo. Sorry to bother you on that.

The settings.py file in django 4.0.6 uses from pathlib import Path, not import os like in the tutorial. How can I resolve this issue?

@gerlachtatras Django 4.0.6 seems to be working just fine when the path in your settings file is defined the old way with the os module. However, if it bothers you, then you can manually edit the settings.py file in your manaement app by replacing the BASE_DIR constant and updating all of its references, for example:

# settings.py

from pathlib import Path

# Build paths inside the project like this: BASE_DIR / 'subdir'.
BASE_DIR = Path(__file__).resolve().parent.parent

# ...

TEMPLATES = [
    {
        'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',
        'DIRS': [BASE_DIR / 'projects/templates'],
        'APP_DIRS': True,
        'OPTIONS': {
            'context_processors': [
                'django.template.context_processors.debug',
                'django.template.context_processors.request',
                'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
                'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',
            ],
        },
    },
]

i am creating a new app called booking, i have checked the management urls and app urls, and still getting this error -

Page not found (404) Request Method: GET Request URL: 127.0.0.1:8000/booking Using the URLconf defined in djangoProject.urls, Django tried these URL patterns, in this order:

admin/ booking/ The current path, booking, didn’t match any of these.

code from management urls.py (djangoProject)

from django.contrib import admin from django.urls import include, path

urlpatterns = [ path(‘admin/’, admin.site.urls), path(‘booking/’, include(‘booking.urls’)), ]

code from app, booking

from django.urls import path from booking import views

urlpatterns = [ path(’ ‘, views.booking_view), ]

i dont know what i am doing wring, i have checked and checked, cant see why i still have htis error

I was not getting the same error message at the end of this video, but a 404 instead. Took me 15 minutes to realize that I simplly forgot to include the forward slash after the word ‘projects’ when assigning the path in portfolio.urls :)