Capturing URL parameters in request.GET

I am currently defining regular expressions in order to capture parameters in a URL, as described in the tutorial. How do I access parameters from the URL as part the HttpRequest object?

My HttpRequest.GET currently returns an empty QueryDict object.

I'd like to learn how to do this without a library, so I can get to know Django better.

When a URL is like domain/search/?q=haha, you would use request.GET.get('q', '').

q is the parameter you want, and '' is the default value if q isn't found.

However, if you are instead just configuring your URLconf**, then your captures from the regex are passed to the function as arguments (or named arguments).

Such as:

(r'^user/(?P<username>\w{0,50})/$', views.profile_page,),

Then in your views.py you would have

def profile_page(request, username):
    # Rest of the method

To clarify camflan's explanation, let's suppose you have

the rule url(regex=r'^user/(?P<username>\w{1,50})/$', view='views.profile_page')
an incoming request for http://domain/user/thaiyoshi/?message=Hi

The URL dispatcher rule will catch parts of the URL path (here "user/thaiyoshi/") and pass them to the view function along with the request object.

The query string (here message=Hi) is parsed and parameters are stored as a QueryDict in request.GET. No further matching or processing for HTTP GET parameters is done.

This view function would use both parts extracted from the URL path and a query parameter:

def profile_page(request, username=None):
    user = User.objects.get(username=username)
    message = request.GET.get('message')

As a side note, you'll find the request method (in this case "GET", and for submitted forms usually "POST") in request.method. In some cases, it's useful to check that it matches what you're expecting.

Update: When deciding whether to use the URL path or the query parameters for passing information, the following may help:

use the URL path for uniquely identifying resources, e.g. /blog/post/15/ (not /blog/posts/?id=15)
use query parameters for changing the way the resource is displayed, e.g. /blog/post/15/?show_comments=1 or /blog/posts/2008/?sort_by=date&direction=desc
to make human-friendly URLs, avoid using ID numbers and use e.g. dates, categories, and/or slugs: /blog/post/2008/09/30/django-urls/

Using GET

request.GET["id"]

Using POST

request.POST["id"]

Someone would wonder how to set path in file urls.py, such as

domain/search/?q=CA

so that we could invoke query.

The fact is that it is not necessary to set such a route in file urls.py. You need to set just the route in urls.py:

urlpatterns = [
    path('domain/search/', views.CityListView.as_view()),
]

And when you input http://servername:port/domain/search/?q=CA. The query part '?q=CA' will be automatically reserved in the hash table which you can reference though

request.GET.get('q', None).

Here is an example (file views.py)

class CityListView(generics.ListAPIView):
    serializer_class = CityNameSerializer

    def get_queryset(self):
        if self.request.method == 'GET':
            queryset = City.objects.all()
            state_name = self.request.GET.get('q', None)
            if state_name is not None:
                queryset = queryset.filter(state__name=state_name)
            return queryset

In addition, when you write query string in the URL:

http://servername:port/domain/search/?q=CA

Do not wrap query string in quotes. For example,

http://servername:port/domain/search/?q="CA"

Capturing URL parameters in request.GET

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