URLField – Django Models

URLField is a CharField, for a URL. It is generally used for storing webpage links or particularly called as URLs. It is validated by URLValidator. To store larger text TextField is used. The default form widget for this field is TextInput.

Syntax

field_name = models.URLField(max_length=200, **options)

URLField has one extra optional argument:

URLField.max_length

The maximum length (in characters) of the field. The max_length is enforced at the database level and in Django’s validation using MaxLengthValidator. If not specified, a default of 200 is used.

Django Model URLField Explanation

Illustration of URLField using an Example. Consider a project named geeksforgeeks having an app named geeks.

Refer to the following articles to check how to create a project and an app in Django.

• How to Create a Basic Project using MVT in Django?
• How to Create an App in Django ?

Enter the following code into models.py file of geeks app.

from django.db import models
from django.db.models import Model
# Create your models here.

class GeeksModel(Model):
    geeks_field = models.URLField(max_length = 200)

Add the geeks app to INSTALLED_APPS

# Application definition

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    'geeks',
]

Now when we run makemigrations command from the terminal,

Python manage.py makemigrations

A new folder named migrations would be created in geeks directory with a file named 0001_initial.py

# Generated by Django 2.2.5 on 2019-09-25 06:00

from django.db import migrations, models

class Migration(migrations.Migration):

    initial = True

    dependencies = [
    ]

    operations = [
        migrations.CreateModel(
            name ='GeeksModel',
            fields =[
                ('id',
                  models.AutoField(
                  auto_created = True,
                  primary_key = True,
                  serialize = False,
                  verbose_name ='ID'
                )),
                ('geeks_field',
                  models.URLField(
                  max_length = 200,
                )),
            ],
        ),
    ]

Now run,

Python manage.py migrate

Thus, an geeks_field URLField is created when you run migrations on the project. It is a field to store URLs validated by URLValidator.

How to use URLField ?

URLField is used for storing URLs in the database. One can store any kind of URL, either internal or external link. URLField should be given an argument max_length for specifying the maximum length of string it is required to store. In the production server, after the Django application is deployed, space is very limited. So it is always optimal to use max_length according to the requirement of the field. Let us create an instance of the URLField we created and check if it is working.

# importing the model
# from geeks app
from geeks.models import GeeksModel

# creating a instance of
# GeeksModel
geek_object = GeeksModel.objects.create(geeks_field ="https://www.geeksforgeeks.org / charfield-django-models/")
geek_object.save()

Now let’s check it in admin server. We have created an instance of GeeksModel.

Field Options

Field Options are the arguments given to each field for applying some constraint or imparting a particular characteristic to a particular Field. For example, adding an argument null = True to URLField will enable it to store empty values for that table in relational database.
Here are the field options and attributes that an URLField can use.

Field Options	Description
Null	If True, Django will store empty values as NULL in the database. Default is False.
Blank	If True, the field is allowed to be blank. Default is False.
db_column	The name of the database column to use for this field. If this isn’t given, Django will use the field’s name.
Default	The default value for the field. This can be a value or a callable object. If callable it will be called every time a new object is created.
help_text	Extra “help” text to be displayed with the form widget. It’s useful for documentation even if your field isn’t used on a form.
primary_key	If True, this field is the primary key for the model.
editable	If False, the field will not be displayed in the admin or any other ModelForm. They are also skipped during model validation. Default is True.
error_messages	The error_messages argument lets you override the default messages that the field will raise. Pass in a dictionary with keys matching the error messages you want to override.
help_text	Extra “help” text to be displayed with the form widget. It’s useful for documentation even if your field isn’t used on a form.
verbose_name	A human-readable name for the field. If the verbose name isn’t given, Django will automatically create it using the field’s attribute name, converting underscores to spaces.
validators	A list of validators to run for this field. See the validators documentation for more information.
Unique	If True, this field must be unique throughout the table.