# Django 5.2 documentation

# The sitemap framework

Django comes with a high-level sitemap-generating framework to create sitemap XML files.

## Overview

A sitemap is an XML file on your website 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.

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’s syndication framework. To create a sitemap, write a `Sitemap` class and point to it in your URLconf.

## Installation

To install the sitemap app, follow these steps:

1. Add `'django.contrib.sitemaps'` to your `INSTALLED_APPS` setting.

2. Make sure your `TEMPLATES` setting contains a `DjangoTemplates` backend whose `APP_DIRS` options is set to `True`. It’s in there by default, so you’ll only need to change this if you’ve changed that setting.

3. Make sure you’ve installed the `sites framework`.

(Note: The sitemap application doesn’t install any database tables. The only reason it needs to go into `INSTALLED_APPS` is so that the `Loader()` template loader can find the default templates.)

## Initialization

views.sitemap(request, sitemaps, section=None, template_name='sitemap.xml', content_type='application/xml')

To activate sitemap generation on your Django site, add this line to your URLconf:

    from django.contrib.sitemaps.views import sitemap

    path(
        "sitemap.xml",
        sitemap,
        {"sitemaps": sitemaps},
        name="django.contrib.sitemaps.views.sitemap",
    )

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/`.

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)`).

## `Sitemap` classes

A `Sitemap` class is a Python class that represents a “section” of entries in your sitemap. For example, one `Sitemap` class could represent all the entries of your blog, while another could represent all of the events in your events calendar.

In the simplest case, all these sections get lumped together into one `sitemap.xml`, but it’s also possible to use the framework to generate a sitemap index that references individual sitemap files, one per section. (See Creating a sitemap index below.)

`Sitemap` classes must subclass `django.contrib.sitemaps.Sitemap`. They can live anywhere in your codebase.

## An example

Let’s 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’s how your sitemap class might look:

    from django.contrib.sitemaps import Sitemap
    from blog.models import Entry

    class BlogSitemap(Sitemap):
        changefreq = "never"
        priority = 0.5

        def items(self):
            return Entry.objects.filter(is_draft=False)

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

Note:

- `changefreq` and `priority` are class attributes corresponding to `<changefreq>` and `<priority>` elements, respectively. They can be made callable as functions, as `lastmod` was in the example.

- `items()` is a method that returns a sequence or `QuerySet` of objects. The objects returned will get passed to any callable methods corresponding to a sitemap property (`location`, `lastmod`, `changefreq`, and `priority`).

- `lastmod` should return a `datetime`.

- There is no `location` method in this example, but you can provide it in order to specify the URL for your object. By default, `location()` calls `get_absolute_url()` on each object and returns the result.

## `Sitemap` class reference

class Sitemap

  A `Sitemap` class can define the following methods/attributes:

  items

    Required. A method that returns a sequence or `QuerySet` of objects. The framework doesn’t care what type of objects they are; all that matters is that these objects get passed to the `location()`, `lastmod()`, `changefreq()` and `priority()` methods.

  location

    Optional. Either a method or attribute.

    If it’s a method, it should return the absolute path for a given object as returned by `items()`.

    If it’s an attribute, its value should be a string representing an absolute path to use for every object returned by `items()`.

    In both cases, “absolute path” means a URL that doesn’t include the protocol or domain. Examples:

    - Good: `'/foo/bar/'`

    - Bad: `'example.com/foo/bar/'`

    - Bad: `'https://example.com/foo/bar/'`

    If `location` isn’t 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`.

  lastmod

    Optional. Either a method or attribute.

    If it’s a method, it should take one argument – an object as returned by `items()` – and return that object’s last-modified date/time as a `datetime`.

    If it’s an attribute, its value should be a `datetime` 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`. 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’t changed.

  paginator

    Optional.

    This property returns a `Paginator` for `items()`. If you generate sitemaps in a batch you may want to override this as a cached property in order to avoid multiple `items()` calls.

  changefreq

    Optional. Either a method or attribute.

    If it’s a method, it should take one argument – an object as returned by `items()` – and return that object’s change frequency as a string.

    If it’s an attribute, its value should be a string representing the change frequency of every object returned by `items()`.

    Possible values for `changefreq`, whether you use a method or attribute, are:

    - `'always'`

    - `'hourly'`

    - `'daily'`

    - `'weekly'`

    - `'monthly'`

    - `'yearly'`

    - `'never'`

  priority

    Optional. Either a method or attribute.

    If it’s a method, it should take one argument – an object as returned by `items()` – and return that object’s priority as either a string or float.

    If it’s 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`. See the sitemaps.org documentation for more.

  protocol

    Optional.

    This attribute defines the protocol (`'http'` or `'https'`) of the URLs in the sitemap. If it isn’t 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'`.

    Deprecated since version 4.0: The default protocol for sitemaps built outside the context of a request will change from `'http'` to `'https'` in Django 5.0.

  limit

    Optional.

    This attribute defines the maximum number of URLs included on each page of the sitemap. Its value should not exceed the default value of `50000`, which is the upper limit allowed in the Sitemaps protocol.

  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`.

  languages

    Optional.

    A sequence of language codes to use for generating alternate links when `i18n` is enabled. Defaults to `LANGUAGES`.

  alternates

    Optional.

    A boolean attribute. When used in conjunction with `i18n` generated URLs will each have a list of alternate links pointing to other language versions using the hreflang attribute. The default is `False`.

  x_default

    Optional.

    A boolean attribute. When `True` the alternate links generated by `alternates` will contain a `hreflang="x-default"` fallback entry with a value of `LANGUAGE_CODE`. The default is `False`.

  get_latest_lastmod()
    New in Django 4.1.

    Optional. A method that returns the latest value returned by `lastmod`. This function is used to add the `lastmod` attribute to Sitemap index context variables.

    By default `get_latest_lastmod()` returns:

    - If `lastmod` is an attribute: `lastmod`.

    - If `lastmod` is a method: The latest `lastmod` returned by calling the method with all items returned by `Sitemap.items()`.

  get_languages_for_item(item)
    New in Django 4.2.

    Optional. A method that returns the sequence of language codes for which the item is displayed. By default `get_languages_for_item()` returns `languages`.

## Shortcuts

The sitemap framework provides a convenience class for a common case:

class GenericSitemap(info_dict, priority=None, changefreq=None, protocol=None)

  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`. This will be used for the `lastmod` attribute and `get_latest_lastmod()` methods in the in the generated sitemap.

  The `priority`, `changefreq`, and `protocol` keyword arguments allow specifying these attributes for all URLs.

### Example

Here’s an example of a URLconf using `GenericSitemap`:

    from django.contrib.sitemaps import GenericSitemap
    from django.contrib.sitemaps.views import sitemap
    from django.urls import path
    from blog.models import Entry

    info_dict = {
        "queryset": Entry.objects.all(),
        "date_field": "pub_date",
    }

    urlpatterns = [
        # some generic view using info_dict
        # ...
        # the sitemap
        path(
            "sitemap.xml",
            sitemap,
            {"sitemaps": {"blog": GenericSitemap(info_dict, priority=0.6)}},
            name="django.contrib.sitemaps.views.sitemap",
        ),
    ]

## Sitemap for static views

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:

    # sitemaps.py
    from django.contrib import sitemaps
    from django.urls import reverse

    class StaticViewSitemap(sitemaps.Sitemap):
        priority = 0.5
        changefreq = "daily"

        def items(self):
            return ["main", "about", "license"]

        def location(self, item):
            return reverse(item)

    # urls.py
    from django.contrib.sitemaps.views import sitemap
    from django.urls import path

    from .sitemaps import StaticViewSitemap
    from . import views

    sitemaps = {
        "static": StaticViewSitemap,
    }

    urlpatterns = [
        path("", views.main, name="main"),
        path("about/", views.about, name="about"),
        path("license/", views.license, name="license"),
        # ...
        path(
            "sitemap.xml",
            sitemap,
            {"sitemaps": sitemaps},
            name="django.contrib.sitemaps.views.sitemap",
        ),
    ]

## Creating a sitemap index

views.index(request, sitemaps, template_name='sitemap_index.xml', content_type='application/xml', sitemap_url_name='django.contrib.sitemaps.views.sitemap')

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:

- You use two views in your URLconf: `django.contrib.sitemaps.views.index()` and `django.contrib.sitemaps.views.sitemap()`.

- The `django.contrib.sitemaps.views.sitemap()` view should take a `section` keyword argument.

Here’s what the relevant URLconf lines would look like for the example above:

    from django.contrib.sitemaps import views

    urlpatterns = [
        path(
            "sitemap.xml",
            views.index,
            {"sitemaps": sitemaps},
            name="django.contrib.sitemaps.views.index",
        ),
        path(
            "sitemap-<section>.xml",
            views.sitemap,
            {"sitemaps": sitemaps},
            name="django.contrib.sitemaps.views.sitemap",
        ),
    ]

This will automatically generate a `sitemap.xml` file that references both `sitemap-flatpages.xml` and `sitemap-blog.xml`. The `Sitemap` classes and the `sitemaps` dict don’t change at all.

If all sitemaps have a `lastmod` returned by `Sitemap.get_latest_lastmod()` the sitemap index will have a `Last-Modified` header equal to the latest `lastmod`.

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’re not using the vanilla sitemap view – for example, if it’s wrapped with a caching decorator – you must name your sitemap view and pass `sitemap_url_name` to the index view:

    from django.contrib.sitemaps import views as sitemaps_views
    from django.views.decorators.cache import cache_page

    urlpatterns = [
        path(
            "sitemap.xml",
            cache_page(86400)(sitemaps_views.index),
            {"sitemaps": sitemaps, "sitemap_url_name": "sitemaps"},
        ),
        path(
            "sitemap-<section>.xml",
            cache_page(86400)(sitemaps_views.sitemap),
            {"sitemaps": sitemaps},
            name="sitemaps",
        ),
    ]

Changed in Django 4.1:

Use of the `Last-Modified` header was added.

## Template customization

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:

    from django.contrib.sitemaps import views

    urlpatterns = [
        path(
            "custom-sitemap.xml",
            views.index,
            {"sitemaps": sitemaps, "template_name": "custom_sitemap.html"},
            name="django.contrib.sitemaps.views.index",
        ),
        path(
            "custom-sitemap-<section>.xml",
            views.sitemap,
            {"sitemaps": sitemaps, "template_name": "custom_sitemap.html"},
            name="django.contrib.sitemaps.views.sitemap",
        ),
    ]

These views return `TemplateResponse` instances which allow you to easily customize the response data before rendering. For more details, see the TemplateResponse documentation.

### Context variables

When customizing the templates for the `index()` and `sitemap()` views, you can rely on the following context variables.

### Index

The variable `sitemaps` is a list of objects containing the `location` and `lastmod` attribute for each of the sitemaps. Each URL exposes the following attributes:

- `location`: The location (url & page) of the sitemap.

- `lastmod`: Populated by the `get_latest_lastmod()` method for each sitemap.

Changed in Django 4.1:

The context was changed to a list of objects with `location` and optional `lastmod` attributes.

### Sitemap

The variable `urlset` is a list of URLs that should appear in the sitemap. Each URL exposes attributes as defined in the `Sitemap` class:

- `alternates`

- `changefreq`

- `item`

- `lastmod`

- `location`

- `priority`

The `alternates` attribute is available when `i18n` and `alternates` are enabled. It is a list of other language versions, including the optional `x_default` fallback, for each URL. Each alternate is a dictionary with `location` and `lang_code` keys.

The `item` attribute has been added for each URL to allow more flexible customization of the templates, such as Google news sitemaps. Assuming Sitemap’s `items()` would return a list of items with `publication_data` and a `tags` field something like this would generate a Google News compatible sitemap:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <urlset
      xmlns="https://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
      xmlns:news="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-news/0.9">
    {% spaceless %}
    {% for url in urlset %}
      <url>
        <loc>{{ url.location }}</loc>
        {% if url.lastmod %}<lastmod>{{ url.lastmod|date:"Y-m-d" }}</lastmod>{% endif %}
        {% if url.changefreq %}<changefreq>{{ url.changefreq }}</changefreq>{% endif %}
        {% if url.priority %}<priority>{{ url.priority }}</priority>{% endif %}
        <news:news>
          {% if url.item.publication_date %}<news:publication_date>{{ url.item.publication_date|date:"Y-m-d" }}</news:publication_date>{% endif %}
          {% if url.item.tags %}<news:keywords>{{ url.item.tags }}</news:keywords>{% endif %}
        </news:news>
       </url>
    {% endfor %}
    {% endspaceless %}
    </urlset>

## Pinging Google

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: `django.contrib.sitemaps.ping_google()`.

ping_google(sitemap_url=None, ping_url=PING_URL, sitemap_uses_https=True)

  `ping_google` takes these optional arguments:

  - `sitemap_url` - The absolute path to your site’s sitemap (e.g., `'/sitemap.xml'`).

    If this argument isn’t provided, `ping_google` will perform a reverse lookup in your URLconf, for URLs named `'django.contrib.sitemaps.views.index'` and then `'django.contrib.sitemaps.views.sitemap'` (without further arguments) to automatically determine the sitemap URL.

  - `ping_url` - Defaults to Google’s Ping Tool: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ping.

  - `sitemap_uses_https` - Set to `False` if your site uses `http` rather than `https`.

  `ping_google()` raises the exception `django.contrib.sitemaps.SitemapNotFound` if it cannot determine your sitemap URL.

Register with Google first!

The `ping_google()` command only works if you have registered your site with Google Search Console.

One useful way to call `ping_google()` is from a model’s `save()` method:

    from django.contrib.sitemaps import ping_google

    class Entry(models.Model):
        # ...
        def save(self, force_insert=False, force_update=False):
            super().save(force_insert, force_update)
            try:
                ping_google()
            except Exception:
                # Bare 'except' because we could get a variety
                # of HTTP-related exceptions.
                pass

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’s servers, so you may not want to introduce that network overhead each time you call `save()`.

### Pinging Google via `manage.py`

django-admin ping_google [sitemap_url]

Once the sitemaps application is added to your project, you may also ping Google using the `ping_google` management command:

    python manage.py ping_google [/sitemap.xml]

--sitemap-uses-http

Use this option if your sitemap uses `http` rather than `https`.