How to specify something other than pk or slug for DetailView

Question

I was wondering if it was possible to use something besides a pk or slug when you are using a DetailView in Django 1.3.

For example, I currently have:

url(r'^mymodel/(?P<pk>\d+)/$', MyDetailView.as_view())

as my url. Say I wanted something like:

url(r'^mymodel/(?P<name>\d+)/$', MyDetailView.as_view())

where name would be a field in the model. Is there anyway to have the DetailView use that to 'grab' the object I want and pass it on to my template?

Answer 1

A slug doesn't have any particular significance in Django. It's just a name for a field that identifies a row. If your slug is called something else, eg name, just specify name as the slug_field attribute in your view subclass.

If you need something more complicated, you can always override get_object in the view class.

Answer 2

You can use attribute "pk_url_kwarg"

urls.py

url(r'^mymodel/(?P<name>\d+)/$', MyDetailView.as_view())

views.py

class MyDetailView(LoginRequiredMixin, DetailView):
    model = ModelName
    pk_url_kwarg = "name" # primary key(to identify object uniquely)
    template_name = "template.html"

for reference view uml design http://epydoc.pythondiary.com/generic-views/ (click on detail view)