Django URLs TypeError: view must be a callable or a list/tuple in the case of include()

Question

After upgrading to Django 1.10, I get the error:

TypeError: view must be a callable or a list/tuple in the case of include().

My urls.py is as follows:

from django.conf.urls import include, url

urlpatterns = [
    url(r'^$', 'myapp.views.home'),
    url(r'^contact/$', 'myapp.views.contact'),
    url(r'^login/$', 'django.contrib.auth.views.login'),
]

The full traceback is:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/alasdair/.virtualenvs/django110/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/utils/autoreload.py", line 226, in wrapper
    fn(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/Users/alasdair/.virtualenvs/django110/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/commands/runserver.py", line 121, in inner_run
    self.check(display_num_errors=True)
  File "/Users/alasdair/.virtualenvs/django110/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 385, in check
    include_deployment_checks=include_deployment_checks,
  File "/Users/alasdair/.virtualenvs/django110/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 372, in _run_checks
    return checks.run_checks(**kwargs)
  File "/Users/alasdair/.virtualenvs/django110/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/checks/registry.py", line 81, in run_checks
    new_errors = check(app_configs=app_configs)
  File "/Users/alasdair/.virtualenvs/django110/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/checks/urls.py", line 14, in check_url_config
    return check_resolver(resolver)
  File "/Users/alasdair/.virtualenvs/django110/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/checks/urls.py", line 24, in check_resolver
    for pattern in resolver.url_patterns:
  File "/Users/alasdair/.virtualenvs/django110/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/utils/functional.py", line 35, in __get__
    res = instance.__dict__[self.name] = self.func(instance)
  File "/Users/alasdair/.virtualenvs/django110/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/urls/resolvers.py", line 310, in url_patterns
    patterns = getattr(self.urlconf_module, "urlpatterns", self.urlconf_module)
  File "/Users/alasdair/.virtualenvs/django110/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/utils/functional.py", line 35, in __get__
    res = instance.__dict__[self.name] = self.func(instance)
  File "/Users/alasdair/.virtualenvs/django110/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/urls/resolvers.py", line 303, in urlconf_module
    return import_module(self.urlconf_name)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/importlib/__init__.py", line 37, in import_module
    __import__(name)
  File "/Users/alasdair/dev/urlproject/urlproject/urls.py", line 28, in <module>
    url(r'^$', 'myapp.views.home'),
  File "/Users/alasdair/.virtualenvs/django110/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/conf/urls/__init__.py", line 85, in url
    raise TypeError('view must be a callable or a list/tuple in the case of include().')
TypeError: view must be a callable or a list/tuple in the case of include().

React

If we use decorators on view and if it do not return anything. In this case also we get above error. recently I got this error. – Bookstore

@AnjaneyuluBatta yes, if a decorator does not return a view then it implicitly returns None, which would cause a TypeError as above. – React

Answer 1

Django 1.10 no longer allows you to specify views as a string (e.g. 'myapp.views.home') in your URL patterns.

The solution is to update your urls.py to include the view callable. This means that you have to import the view in your urls.py. If your URL patterns don't have names, then now is a good time to add one, because reversing with the dotted python path no longer works.

from django.conf.urls import include, url

from django.contrib.auth.views import login
from myapp.views import home, contact

urlpatterns = [
    url(r'^$', home, name='home'),
    url(r'^contact/$', contact, name='contact'),
    url(r'^login/$', login, name='login'),
]

If there are many views, then importing them individually can be inconvenient. An alternative is to import the views module from your app.

from django.conf.urls import include, url

from django.contrib.auth import views as auth_views
from myapp import views as myapp_views

urlpatterns = [
    url(r'^$', myapp_views.home, name='home'),
    url(r'^contact/$', myapp_views.contact, name='contact'),
    url(r'^login/$', auth_views.login, name='login'),
]

Note that we have used as myapp_views and as auth_views, which allows us to import the views.py from multiple apps without them clashing.

See the Django URL dispatcher docs for more information about urlpatterns.

React

What about class based views? – Saturn

You've never been able to use the dotted string path for class based views, so they are not relevant to this question. – React

I wish to see the change like this come with some helper (a migrating script), because you are not able to use prefix as well. import_module could help you build own lookup as a wrapper for the old-way string, in a case when thousands of urls are waiting for you to update them. – Rheo

You still have to import other packages, too - import from django.conf.urls import url. Please fix your solution. – Abysmal

@Abysmal I didn't include the url import in the question/answer because they remain the same when upgrading to Django 1.10 (unless you have django.conf.urls.defaults from Django 1.5 or earlier). I've added the imports as you asked, but I'm not sure that this is a good idea, since the imports change again in Django 2.0. If you want to know the correct imports, then the docs for your version of Django (e.g. 1.11, 2.0) are the best place to look. – React

Answer 2

This error just means that myapp.views.home is not something that can be called, like a function. It is a string in fact. While your solution works in django 1.9, nevertheless it throws a warning saying this will deprecate from version 1.10 onwards, which is exactly what has happened. The previous solution by @Alasdair imports the necessary view functions into the script through either from myapp import views as myapp_views or from myapp.views import home, contact

Gangling

Answer 3

You may also get this error if you have a name clash of a view and a module. I've got the error when i distribute my view files under views folder, /views/view1.py, /views/view2.py and imported some model named table.py in view2.py which happened to be a name of a view in view1.py. So naming the view functions as v_table(request,id) helped.

Watchman

Answer 4

Your code is

urlpatterns = [
    url(r'^$', 'myapp.views.home'),
    url(r'^contact/$', 'myapp.views.contact'),
    url(r'^login/$', 'django.contrib.auth.views.login'),
]

change it to following as you're importing include() function :

urlpatterns = [
    url(r'^$', views.home),
    url(r'^contact/$', views.contact),
    url(r'^login/$', views.login),
]

Windpollinated

Answer 5

Just in case you got the error on your terminal, it is possible that if you stop the server and then run it again, it would work. On Windows:

ctrl+c

to stop the server then run the server again:

python manage.py runserver

Cheers.

Kirby

Answer 6

change register = template.Library() to registerr = template.Library() resovled my issue

Radiative