Django - Testing a view name retrieved from a url parameter ie. ref=home

Question

Simply put, I am trying to test a view name, captured from a URL parameter, within one of my view functions to see if it is valid. If not, to redirect to another page.

For example, take this url...

www.site.com/users/?ref=view_name

Then in my view

    ref = request.GET.get('ref', None)
    return redirect(ref) if ref else redirect('users')

The problem is, of course, that if a user alters the ref parameter, it will kick back a 404. I was hoping to be able to test if ref=home is a valid view and return it, if not then redirect to another view.

I have been messing with Django's resolve and reverse but I am not getting the results I was looking for.

I also tried to use a try/finally in all sorts of ways mixed in with resolve and reverse. Yeah, dumb...I know.

try:
     if ref:
          return redirect(resolve(ref))
finally:        
     return redirect('user')

I have searched for almost two hours to try to fund a succinct way to do this.

Any help would be appreciated!

Answer 1

Working Solution This was actually very simple after guidance from @Code-Apprentice

A couple Imports first off

from django.urls.resolvers import NoReverseMatch
from django.urls import reverse

Then to get the ref parameter and validate is as a legit view name I did the following

# get ref parameter
ref = request.GET.get('ref', None)

if ref:
    try:
        # redirect to ref view name if valid
        return redirect(reverse(ref))
    except NoReverseMatch as e:
        print('No reverse match found')

# redirect to specific view if ref is invalid
return redirect('users')