Django Sitemap | How to Setup a Sitemap for Your App

In this article, we'll learn how to Create sitemap for Django, so if you want to have a sitemap for your website or blog, you are in the right place.

1. Django Project structure

├── core
│   ├── admin.py
│   ├── apps.py
│   ├── forms.py
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── migrations
│   ├── models.py
│   ├── __pycache__
│   ├── tests.py
│   ├── urls.py
│   └── views.py
├── db.sqlite3
├── manage.py
├── media
├── pypro
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── __pycache__
│   ├── settings.py
│   ├── urls.py
│   └── wsgi.py
├── static
└── TEMPLATES

2. Setting up Django Sitemaps

In settings.py, add the following line to INSTALLED_APPS.

# pypro/settings.py

INSTALLED_APPS = [
  	
    'django.contrib.sitemaps',
]

Create sitemaps.py into your project folder, in my case I'll create it into pypro folder

Now, put the following line:

# pypro/sitemaps.py

from django.contrib.sitemaps import Sitemap
from django.shortcuts import reverse


class StaticViewSitemap(Sitemap):
    def items(self):
        return [''] # path's name
    def location(self, item):
        return reverse(item)

urls.py

Now, add a path for Django sitemap.

# pypro/urls.py

from django.contrib.sitemaps.views import sitemap
from .sitemaps import StaticViewSitemap

sitemaps = {
    'static': StaticViewSitemap
}

urlpatterns = [
	#...
	#sitemap
    path('sitemap.xml', sitemap, {'sitemaps': sitemaps}),
]

Done!

3. Creating sitemaps For a simle view

First, we need to create a simple page view.

views.py:

# core/views.py

def index(self):
    return HttpResponse("<h1>Index Page</h1>")

urls.py:

# core/urls.py

from .views import *

urlpatterns = [

path('index/', index, name="index_page"),

]

http://localhost:8000:

Now, let's add our Views URL to the sitemaps.

sitemaps.py:

# pypro/sitemaps.py
from django.contrib.sitemaps import Sitemap
from django.shortcuts import reverse

#Creating the sitemap
class StaticViewSitemap(Sitemap):
    def items(self):
        return ['index_page'] # path's name
    def location(self, item):
        return reverse(item)

index_page: name that we've set for index view path.

let's check out the sitemaps' page.

4. Creating Django sitemaps with a dynamic URL

Let's say you have a blog website, and you want to add articles URL to sitemaps.

First, we'll prepare our articles DetailView.

models.py

# core/models.py

class Articles(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=300, null=True, blank=True)
    content = models.TextField(null=True, blank=True)
    time = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
    def __str__(self):
       return self.title


    def get_absolute_url(self):
        return reverse('Articles', args=(self.pk,))  

after adding some data.

views.py:

# core/models.py

class ArticleDetail(DetailView):
    model = Articles
    slug_field = 'pk'

urls.py:

# core/urls	

#Articles
path('article/<slug:slug>/', ArticleDetail.as_view(), name='Articles'),

Now, we'll add The articles' URL to our sitemap.

sitemaps.py:

# pypro/sitemaps.py
from django.contrib.sitemaps import Sitemap
from django.shortcuts import reverse

#models
from core.models import Articles


class StaticViewSitemap(Sitemap):
    def items(self):
        return ['index_page'] # paths name
    def location(self, item):
        return reverse(item)

class SnippetViewSitemap(Sitemap):
    def items(self):
        return Articles.objects.all()

urls.py:

#pypro/urls.py

sitemaps = {
    'static': StaticViewSitemap,
    'snippet':SnippetViewSitemap,
}

result:

as you can see, the urls has been created.

5. Sitemaps Options

after Creating the sitemaps, now we'll add some options to our Blog sitemaps, like changefreq priority lastmod

sitemaps.py:

# pypro/sitemaps.py
class SnippetViewSitemap(Sitemap):
    changefreq = "never"
    priority = 0.5

    def items(self):
        return Articles.objects.all()

    def lastmod(self, obj):
        return obj.time    

Great!

for more information, check out https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.1/ref/contrib/sitemaps/

6. Summary

In this article, I showed you my method to Create sitemaps for websites.

if you want to get a responsive theme for your Django admin interface, check out this article: https://pytutorial.com/install-django-jet