Path Converters

Part of the Django Basics section of Coddy's Django journey. Lesson 6 of 23.

Every table in the café has a QR code, and each code needs its own page. One route can match them all when part of it is a path converter. A calendar might use two:

path("calendar/<int:year>/<int:month>/", views.calendar),

The part in angle brackets is a converter: a type, a colon, a name. int matches a whole number and turns it into a Python int. The view gets each value as an argument with that name:

def calendar(request, year, month):
    return HttpResponse(f"<h2>{month} / {year}</h2>")

For /calendar/2026/3/, Django calls calendar(request, year=2026, month=3). An address the converter does not match, like /calendar/next/3/, answers 404 and the view never runs.

Challenge

Easy

Give every table its page:

in menu/urls.py, one route that matches /table/5/, /table/12/ and any other whole number;
in menu/views.py, a view table that returns <h1>Table 5</h1> for table 5, and so on.

/table/abc/ answers 404. Press Run: the preview opens /table/5/.

Try it yourself

from django.urls import path

from . import views

urlpatterns = [
    path("", views.home),
    path("about/", views.about),
    path("hours/", views.hours),
    path("contact/", views.contact),
]