How do I make this regex URL pattern work in Django 2

Question

I need to make a URL pattern which could work with this URL:

mysite.com/blog/12/بلاگ-مثال

It contains utf-8 characters so I tried using \X:

re_path(r'^blog/?P<blog_id>[\d+]+/(?P<slug>[\X.*]+)/$', views.single_blog, name='single_blog')

But it didn't work. I don't know why. Maybe just because I'm not good in regex. So I tried a different pattern using just .* to accept anything:

re_path(r'^blog/?P<blog_id>[\d+]+/(?P<slug>[.*]+)/$', views.single_blog, name='single_blog')

But this also doesn't work and I get:

The current path, blog/12/بلاگ-مثال, didn't match any of these.

So as I mentioned I'm not good in regex, what's the right way to fix this?

Is it the right time to say now I have two problems or regex is the only way?

Answer 1

Your approach to match something did not work since \X is not supported by Python re and [.*]+ matches 1+ dots or asterisks, but not any chars (because you put .* into [...] character class where they denote literal symbols, not special chars).

Besides, [\d+]+ is also a character class matching any digit or +, 1 or more times, so there is also a problem.

You may use a [^/] negated character class to match any char but /:

r'^blog/(?P<blog_id>\d+)/(?P<slug>[^/]+)/?$'

Details

• ^ - start of input
• blog/ - a literal substrig
• (?P<blog_id>\d+) - Group "blog_id": 1+ digits
• / - a /
• (?P<slug>[^/]+) - Group "slug": 1+ chars other than /
• /? - an optional /
• $ - end of string.

Here is a regex demo (note highlighting characters from the Arabic script is not working there.)