From Classy Class Based View the RedirectView will

Provide a redirect on any GET request.

It is an extension of View and has 5 attributes:

  • http_method_names (from View)
  • pattern_name: The name of the URL pattern to redirect to. 1 This will be used if no url is used.
  • permanent: a flag to determine if the redirect is permanent or not. If set to True, then the HTTP Status Code 301 is returned. If set to False the 302 is returned
  • query_string: If True then it will pass along the query string from the RedirectView. If it’s False it won’t. If this is set to True and neither pattern\_name nor url are set then nothing will be passed to the RedirectView
  • url: Where the Redirect should point. It will take precedence over the patter_name so you should only url or pattern\_name but not both. This will need to be an absolute url, not a relative one, otherwise you may get a 404 error

The example below will give a 301 status code:

class myRedirectView(RedirectView):
    pattern_name = 'rango:template_view'
    permanent = True
    query_string = True

While this would be a 302 status code:

class myRedirectView(RedirectView):
    pattern_name = 'rango:template_view'
    permanent = False
    query_string = True

Methods

The method get\_redirect\_url allows you to perform actions when the redirect is called. From the Django Docs the example given is increasing a counter on an Article Read value.

Diagram

A visual representation of how RedirectView derives from View 2

Redirect View

Conclusion

In general, given the power of the url mapping in Django I’m not sure why you would need to use a the Redirect View. From Real Python they concur, stating:

As you can see, the class-based approach does not provide any obvious benefit while adding some hidden complexity. That raises the question: when should you use RedirectView?

If you want to add a redirect directly in your urls.py, using RedirectView makes sense. But if you find yourself overwriting getredirecturl, a function-based view might be easier to understand and more flexible for future enhancements.

  1. From the [Django Docs](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.2/ref/class-based-views/base/ ↩︎
  2. Original Source from Classy Class Based Views ↩︎

tags: CBV, class based views, django