Advantages to using URLField over TextField?
URLField is actually CharField w/ supporting of Regexp-based URL pattern checking and a online validator(which was replaced by a RegEx based validator), you could use TextField if you don't care length-limitation of URL
from django.core.validators import URLValidator# in modelfield = models.TextField(validators=[URLValidator()])
Furthermore, using of CharField or TextField depends on whether you want max-length constraint on the field, and which element type is more suitable for editing: textarea or input. On PostgreSQL side, there is no significant difference.
Try this class:
class LongURLField(TextField): description = 'Long URL' def __init__(self, verbose_name=None, name=None, **kwargs): TextField.__init__(self, verbose_name, name, **kwargs) self.validators.append(validators.URLValidator()) def formfield(self, **kwargs): # As with TextField, this will cause URL validation to be performed # twice. defaults = { 'form_class': forms.URLField, } defaults.update(kwargs) return super(LongURLField, self).formfield(**defaults)
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/models/fields/#urlfieldOf course you can use CharField/TextField but handling user input and be sure whatever user enters is up-to you.
From the source code:
# As with CharField, this will cause URL validation to be performed
If you see the URLField source code you will find it's actually a CharField with URL validator.
Also there is other ready to use fields such as EmailField, ImageField, *Field!