Built-in Views

    (request, path, document_root, show_indexes=False)

    There may be files other than your project’s static assets that, for convenience, you’d like to have Django serve for you in local development. The serve() view can be used to serve any directory you give it. (This view is not hardened for production use and should be used only as a development aid; you should serve these files in production using a real front-end web server).

    The most likely example is user-uploaded content in . django.contrib.staticfiles is intended for static assets and has no built-in handling for user-uploaded files, but you can have Django serve your MEDIA_ROOT by appending something like this to your URLconf:

    Note, the snippet assumes your has a value of 'media/'. This will call the serve() view, passing in the path from the URLconf and the (required) document_root parameter.

    Since it can become a bit cumbersome to define this URL pattern, Django ships with a small URL helper function that takes as parameters the prefix such as MEDIA_URL and a dotted path to a view, such as 'django.views.static.serve'. Any other function parameter will be transparently passed to the view.

    Error views

    Django comes with a few views by default for handling HTTP errors. To override these with your own custom views, see Customizing error views.

    When you raise from within a view, Django loads a special view devoted to handling 404 errors. By default, it’s the view django.views.defaults.page_not_found(), which either produces a “Not Found” message or loads and renders the template 404.html if you created it in your root template directory.

    The default 404 view will pass two variables to the template: request_path, which is the URL that resulted in the error, and exception, which is a useful representation of the exception that triggered the view (e.g. containing any message passed to a specific Http404 instance).

    Three things to note about 404 views:

    • The 404 view is also called if Django doesn’t find a match after checking every regular expression in the URLconf.
    • The 404 view is passed a and will have access to variables supplied by your template context processors (e.g. MEDIA_URL).
    • If DEBUG is set to (in your settings module), then your 404 view will never be used, and your URLconf will be displayed instead, with some debug information.

    defaults.server_error(request, template_name=’500.html’)

    Similarly, Django executes special-case behavior in the case of runtime errors in view code. If a view results in an exception, Django will, by default, call the view django.views.defaults.server_error, which either produces a “Server Error” message or loads and renders the template 500.html if you created it in your root template directory.

    The default 500 view passes no variables to the 500.html template and is rendered with an empty Context to lessen the chance of additional errors.

    defaults.permission_denied(request, exception, template_name=’403.html’)

    In the same vein as the 404 and 500 views, Django has a view to handle 403 Forbidden errors. If a view results in a 403 exception then Django will, by default, call the view django.views.defaults.permission_denied.

    This view loads and renders the template 403.html in your root template directory, or if this file does not exist, instead serves the text “403 Forbidden”, as per (the HTTP 1.1 Specification). The template context contains exception, which is the string representation of the exception that triggered the view.

    is triggered by a PermissionDenied exception. To deny access in a view you can use code like this:

    2. def edit(request, pk):
    3.     if not request.user.is_staff:
    4.         raise PermissionDenied

    defaults.bad_request(request, exception, template_name=’400.html’)

    When a is raised in Django, it may be handled by a component of Django (for example resetting the session data). If not specifically handled, Django will consider the current request a ‘bad request’ instead of a server error.

    bad_request views are also only used when DEBUG is .