In the Django docs it says about url patterns:
It is possible to pass a string containing the path to a view rather than the actual Python function object. This alternative is supported for the time being, though is not recommended and will be removed in a future version of Django.
Does anyone have any insight as to why this the case? I find this alternative to be quite handy and can't find anything explaining why this is a bad (or, at least, less than ideal) idea.
I think the 1.8 Release Notes in the repo explains it quite well. Here's a summary of the main points:
In the modern era, we have updated the tutorial to instead recommend importing your views module and referencing your view functions (or classes) directly. This has a number of advantages, all deriving from the fact that we are using normal Python in place of "Django String Magic": the errors when you mistype a view name are less obscure, IDEs can help with autocompletion of view names, etc.
Thus
patterns()serves little purpose and is a burden when teaching new users (answering the newbie's question "why do I need this empty string as the first argument topatterns()?"). For these reasons, we are deprecating it. Updating your code is as simple as ensuring thaturlpatternsis a list of :func:django.conf.urls.urlinstances.
