Making Perfect SEO Friendly URL in Django Using Slug

 In this article, you will learn how to make a perfect human-readable URL like (https://xyz.com/how-to-make-a-perfect-url-in-django), instead of putting id (https://xyz.com/1) in Django. To do this we are going to use Django built-in FieldType (SlugField) in our custom model.

What is Slug in Django

In Django slug is a short scripted label for some text, title, or string. A slugify string or text contains only letters, numbers, hyphens, or underscores. For example, we have a title field in a model, and the text of this title has "Learn Openerp", then in terms of a slug this title field will convert into "learn-openerp".

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Why do we use a slug in Django

In Django to create a perfect and human-readable URL, we can use the slug. Django provides a "SlugField" type field to store slug values. By using this field we can generate or store a valid dynamic URL for our web pages.

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What if we can not use slug

For example, if we have a title like this (Learn Openerp). Then in URL this title will be automatically replaced by Learn%20Openerp, this is not a good practice. As we know that we can not add a space in the URL, so to overcome this issue we will use the slug to make a human-readable URL.

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Example of URL Before applying slug

https://xyz.com/1

Example of URL Before applying slug

https://xyz.com/how-to-make-a-perfect-url-in-django

Step by step guide to making a perfect URL instead of id

Below is the step-by-step guide to making a perfect URL using the slug in Django. 

The above code to make a URL with hyphens has the following features.

• Create a unique slug
• Convert the title automatically into slug using signals
• Whenever a change in title field slug field will automatically update its value
• If the slug field is empty, then just save the value again using the admin panel to apply changes in the slug field

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Create a field named "slug" with field type "SlugField"

models.py

	from django.db import models
	from django.dispatch import receiver
	from django.db.models.signals import pre_save
	from .utils import unique_slug_generator
	class SomeModel(models.Model):
	title = models.CharField(max_length=400)
	slug = models.SlugField(max_length=400, null=True, blank=True, unique=True)
	def __str__(self):
	return self.title
	@receiver(pre_save, sender=SomeModel)
	def pre_save_receiver(sender, instance, *args, **kwargs):
	if not instance.slug:
	instance.slug = unique_slug_generator(instance)

view raw append_hyphens_in_django_url_using_slug.py hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Create a python field named "utils" in your Django app

utils.py

	import string, random
	from django.utils.text import slugify
	def random_string_generator(size=10, chars=string.ascii_lowercase + string.digits):
	return ''.join(random.choice(chars) for _ in range(size))
	def unique_slug_generator(instance, new_slug=None):
	if new_slug is not None:
	slug = new_slug
	else:
	slug = slugify(instance.title)
	Klass = instance.__class__
	max_length = Klass._meta.get_field('slug').max_length
	slug = slug[:max_length]
	qs_exists = Klass.objects.filter(slug=slug).exists()
	if qs_exists:
	new_slug = "{slug}-{randstr}".format(
	slug=slug[:max_length - 5], randstr=random_string_generator(size=4))
	return unique_slug_generator(instance, new_slug=new_slug)
	return slug

view raw append_hyphens_in_django_url_using_slug_utils.py hosted with ❤ by GitHub

In the app, in urls file modify your path (url) like below.

path('test/<slug:slug>/', views.your_view_goes_here, name='your path name goes here'),

urls.py

After that, just run the below command in the terminal to change your database.

python manage.py makemigrations

python manage.py migrate