A sitemap is an XML file on your Web site that tells search engine indexers how frequently your pages change and how important certain pages are in relation to other pages on your site. This information helps search engines index your site.<\/p>\n
The Django sitemap framework automates the creation of this XML file by letting you express this information in Python code. It works much like Django\u2019s syndication framework. To create a sitemap, just write a Sitemap class and point to it in your URLconf.<\/p>\n
To install the sitemap app, follow these steps:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
To activate sitemap generation on your Django site, add this line to your URLconf:
\nfrom django.contrib.sitemaps.views import sitemap<\/p>\n
url(r’^sitemap\\.xml$’, sitemap, {‘sitemaps’: sitemaps},
\nname=’django.contrib.sitemaps.views.sitemap’)<\/p>\n
This tells Django to build a sitemap when a client accesses \/sitemap.xml. The name of the sitemap file is not important, but the location is. Search engines will only index links in your sitemap for the current URL level and below. For instance, if sitemap.xml lives in your root directory, it may reference any URL in your site. However, if your sitemap lives at \/content\/sitemap.xml, it may only reference URLs that begin with \/content\/.<\/p>\n
The sitemap view takes an extra, required argument: {‘sitemaps’: sitemaps}. sitemaps should be a dictionary that maps a short section label (e.g., blog or news) to its Sitemap class (e.g., BlogSitemap or NewsSitemap). It may also map to an instance of a Sitemap class (e.g., BlogSitemap(some_var)).<\/p>\n
A Sitemap class is a simple Python class that represents a section of entries in your sitemap. For example, one Sitemap class could represent all the entries of your Weblog, while another could represent all of the events in your events calendar.<\/p>\n
In the simplest case, all these sections get lumped together into one sitemap.xml, but it\u2019s also possible to use the framework to generate a sitemap index that references individual sitemap files, one per section.<\/p>\n
Sitemap classes must subclass django.contrib.sitemaps.Sitemap. They can live anywhere in your codebase.
\nA Simple Example
\nLet\u2019s assume you have a blog system, with an Entry model, and you want your sitemap to include all the links to your individual blog entries. Here\u2019s how your sitemap class might look:<\/p>\n
from django.contrib.sitemaps import Sitemap
\nfrom blog.models import Entry<\/p>\n
class BlogSitemap(Sitemap):
\nchangefreq = “never”
\npriority = 0.5<\/p>\n
def items(self):
\nreturn Entry.objects.filter(is_draft=False)<\/p>\n
def lastmod(self, obj):
\nreturn obj.pub_date
\nNote:<\/p>\n
A Sitemap class can define the following methods\/attributes:<\/p>\n
items<\/strong> – Required. A method that returns a list of objects. The framework doesn\u2019t care what type of objects they are; all that matters is that these objects get passed to the location(), lastmod(), changefreq() and priority() methods.<\/p>\n location<\/strong> – Optional. Either a method or attribute. If it\u2019s a method, it should return the absolute path for a given object as returned by items(). If it\u2019s an attribute, its value should be a string representing an absolute path to use for every object returned by items().<\/p>\n In both cases, absolute path means a URL that doesn\u2019t include the protocol or domain. Examples:<\/p>\n If location isn\u2019t provided, the framework will call the get_absolute_url() method on each object as returned by items(). To specify a protocol other than http, use protocol.<\/p>\n lastmod<\/strong> – Optional. Either a method or attribute. If it\u2019s a method, it should take one argument \u2013 an object as returned by items() \u2013 and return that object\u2019s last-modified date\/time, as a Python datetime.datetime object.<\/p>\n If it\u2019s an attribute, its value should be a Python datetime.datetime object representing the last-modified date\/time for every object returned by items(). If all items in a sitemap have a lastmod, the sitemap generated by views.sitemap() will have a Last-Modified header equal to the latest lastmod.<\/p>\n You can activate the ConditionalGetMiddleware to make Django respond appropriately to requests with an If-Modified-Since header which will prevent sending the sitemap if it hasn\u2019t changed.<\/p>\n changefreq<\/strong> – Optional. Either a method or attribute. If it\u2019s a method, it should take one argument \u2013 an object as returned by items() \u2013 and return that object\u2019s change frequency, as a Python string. If it\u2019s an attribute, its value should be a string representing the change frequency of every object returned by items(). priority<\/strong> – Optional. Either a method or attribute. If it\u2019s a method, it should take one argument \u2013 an object as returned by items() \u2013 and return that object\u2019s priority, as either a string or float.<\/p>\n If it\u2019s an attribute, its value should be either a string or float representing the priority of every object returned by items(). Example values for priority: 0.4, 1.0. The default priority of a page is 0.5.<\/p>\n protocol<\/strong> – Optional. This attribute defines the protocol (http or https) of the URLs in the sitemap. If it isn\u2019t set, the protocol with which the sitemap was requested is used. If the sitemap is built outside the context of a request, the default is http.<\/p>\n i18n – Optional. A boolean attribute that defines if the URLs of this sitemap should be generated using all of your LANGUAGES. The default is False.<\/p>\n The sitemap framework provides a convenience class for a common case \u2013 django.contrib.syndication.GenericSitemap<\/p>\n The django.contrib.sitemaps.GenericSitemap class allows you to create a sitemap by passing it a dictionary which has to contain at least a queryset entry. This queryset will be used to generate the items of the sitemap. It may also have a date_field entry that specifies a date field for objects retrieved from the queryset.<\/p>\n This will be used for the lastmod attribute in the generated sitemap. You may also pass priority and changefreq keyword arguments to the GenericSitemap constructor to specify these attributes for all URLs.<\/p>\n Example – Here’s an example of a URLconf using `GenericSitemap`: info_dict = { urlpatterns = [ # the sitemap Sitemap for static views<\/strong> – Often you want the search engine crawlers to index views which are neither object detail pages nor flatpages. The solution is to explicitly list URL names for these views in items and call reverse() in the location method of the sitemap. For example:<\/p>\n # sitemaps.py class StaticViewSitemap(sitemaps.Sitemap): def items(self): def location(self, item): # urls.py from .sitemaps import StaticViewSitemap sitemaps = { urlpatterns = [ Creating a sitemap index<\/strong> – The sitemap framework also has the ability to create a sitemap index that references individual sitemap files, one per each section defined in your sitemaps dictionary. The only differences in usage are:<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what the relevant URLconf lines would look like for the example above:<\/p>\n from django.contrib.sitemaps import views<\/p>\n urlpatterns = [ This will automatically generate a sitemap.xml file that references both sitemap-flatpages.xml and sitemap-blog.xml. The Sitemap classes and the sitemaps dictionary don\u2019t change at all.<\/p>\n You should create an index file if one of your sitemaps has more than 50,000 URLs. In this case, Django will automatically paginate the sitemap, and the index will reflect that. If you\u2019re not using the vanilla sitemap view \u2013 for example, if it\u2019s wrapped with a caching decorator \u2013 you must name your sitemap view and pass sitemap_url_name to the index view:<\/p>\n from django.contrib.sitemaps import views as sitemaps_views urlpatterns = [ If you wish to use a different template for each sitemap or sitemap index available on your site, you may specify it by passing a template_name parameter to the sitemap and index views via the URLconf:<\/p>\n from django.contrib.sitemaps import views<\/p>\n urlpatterns = [ Context variables<\/strong> – When customizing the templates for the index() and sitemap() views, you can rely on the following context variables.<\/p>\n Index<\/strong> – The variable sitemaps is a list of absolute URLs to each of the sitemaps. The item attribute has been added for each URL to allow more flexible customization of the templates, such as Google news sitemaps. Assuming Sitemap\u2019s items() would return a list of items with publication_data and a tags field something like this would generate a Google compatible sitemap:<\/p>\n {% spaceless %} {% if url.item.publication_date %}{{ url.item.publication_date|date:”Y-m-d” }}{\\ {% endfor %} You may want to ping Google when your sitemap changes, to let it know to reindex your site. The sitemaps framework provides a function to do just that:<\/p>\n django.contrib.syndication.ping_google() – ping_google() takes an optional argument, sitemap_url, which should be the absolute path to your site\u2019s sitemap (e.g., ‘\/sitemap.xml’). If this argument isn\u2019t provided, ping_google() will attempt to figure out your sitemap by performing a reverse looking in your URLconf. ping_google() raises the exception django.contrib.sitemaps.SitemapNotFound if it cannot determine your sitemap URL.<\/p>\n One useful way to call ping_google() is from a model\u2019s save() method:<\/p>\n from django.contrib.sitemaps import ping_google<\/p>\n class Entry(models.Model): A more efficient solution, however, would be to call ping_google() from a cron script, or some other scheduled task. The function makes an HTTP request to Google\u2019s servers, so you may not want to introduce that network overhead each time you call save().<\/p>\n Pinging Google via manage.py – Once the sitemaps application is added to your project, you may also ping Google using the ping_google management command:<\/p>\n python manage.py ping_google [\/sitemap.xml]\n\n\n\n
\nPossible values for changefreq, whether you use a method or attribute, are:<\/p>\n\n
Shortcuts<\/h3>\n
\nfrom django.conf.urls import url
\nfrom django.contrib.sitemaps import GenericSitemap
\nfrom django.contrib.sitemaps.views import sitemap
\nfrom blog.models import Entry<\/p>\n
\n‘queryset’: Entry.objects.all(),
\n‘date_field’: ‘pub_date’,
\n}<\/p>\n
\n# some generic view using info_dict
\n# …<\/p>\n
\nurl(r’^sitemap\\.xml$’, sitemap,
\n{‘sitemaps’: {‘blog’: GenericSitemap(info_dict, priority=0.6)}},
\nname=’django.contrib.sitemaps.views.sitemap’),
\n]\n
\nfrom django.contrib import sitemaps
\nfrom django.core.urlresolvers import reverse<\/p>\n
\npriority = 0.5
\nchangefreq = ‘daily’<\/p>\n
\nreturn [‘main’, ‘about’, ‘license’]\n
\nreturn reverse(item)<\/p>\n
\nfrom django.conf.urls import url
\nfrom django.contrib.sitemaps.views import sitemap<\/p>\n
\nfrom . import views<\/p>\n
\n‘static’: StaticViewSitemap,
\n}<\/p>\n
\nurl(r’^$’, views.main, name=’main’),
\nurl(r’^about\/$’, views.about, name=’about’),
\nurl(r’^license\/$’, views.license, name=’license’),
\n# …
\nurl(r’^sitemap\\.xml$’, sitemap, {‘sitemaps’: sitemaps},
\nname=’django.contrib.sitemaps.views.sitemap’)
\n]\n\n
\nurl(r’^sitemap\\.xml$’, views.index, {‘sitemaps’: sitemaps}),
\nurl(r’^sitemap-(?P<section>.+)\\.xml$’, views.sitemap,
\n{‘sitemaps’: sitemaps}),
\n]\n
\nfrom django.views.decorators.cache import cache_page<\/p>\n
\nurl(r’^sitemap\\.xml$’,
\ncache_page(86400)(sitemaps_views.index),
\n{‘sitemaps’: sitemaps, ‘sitemap_url_name’: ‘sitemaps’}),
\nurl(r’^sitemap-(?P<section>.+)\\.xml$’,
\ncache_page(86400)(sitemaps_views.sitemap),
\n{‘sitemaps’: sitemaps}, name=’sitemaps’),
\n]\nTemplate customization<\/h3>\n
\nurl(r’^custom-sitemap\\.xml$’, views.index, {
\n‘sitemaps’: sitemaps,
\n‘template_name’: ‘custom_sitemap.html’
\n}),
\nurl(r’^custom-sitemap-(?P<section>.+)\\.xml$’, views.sitemap, {
\n‘sitemaps’: sitemaps,
\n‘template_name’: ‘custom_sitemap.html’
\n}),
\n]\n
\nSitemap – The variable urlset is a list of URLs that should appear in the sitemap. Each URL exposes attributes as defined in the Sitemap class:<\/p>\n\n
\n{% for url in urlset %}
\n{{ url.location }}
\n{% if url.lastmod %}{{ url.lastmod|date:”Y-m-d” }}{% endif %}
\n{% if url.changefreq %}{{ url.changefreq }}{% endif %}
\n{% if url.priority %}{{ url.priority }}{% endif %}<\/p>\n
\n% endif %}
\n{% if url.item.tags %}{{ url.item.tags }}{% endif %}<\/p>\n
\n{% endspaceless %}<\/p>\nPinging Google<\/h3>\n
\n# …
\ndef save(self, force_insert=False, force_update=False):
\nsuper(Entry, self).save(force_insert, force_update)
\ntry:
\nping_google()
\nexcept Exception:
\n# Bare ‘except’ because we could get a variety
\n# of HTTP-related exceptions.
\npass<\/p>\n