# Best practice for urls without trailing slash
**URL:** https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/best-practice-for-urls-without-trailing-slash/36057
**Category:** Getting Started
**Created:** [October 29, 2024, 5:28pm UTC](https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/best-practice-for-urls-without-trailing-slash/36057 "2024-10-29T17:28:03Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@martinberoiz](https://forum.djangoproject.com/u/martinberoiz)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2024, 5:28pm UTC](https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/best-practice-for-urls-without-trailing-slash/36057/1 "2024-10-29T17:28:03Z")
I have a website in which I want my api nodes **not** end with trailing slashes. In my main `urls.py` I have
```python
# urls.py
path("api/", include("api.urls")),
```
And inside my `api` app I have my regular api nodes:
```python
# api/urls.py
path("", TemplateView.as_view(template_name="index.html")),
path("runs", views.RunListView.as_view(), name="run-list"),
...
```
That will give me urls like `/api/`, `/api/runs`, etc. So far so good. But if I want my “root” app node also have no trailing slash, I would do:
```python
# urls.py
path("api", include("api.urls")),
```
```python
# api/urls.py
path("", TemplateView.as_view(template_name="index.html")),
path("/runs", views.RunListView.as_view(), name="run-list"),
...
```
I now need to _prepend_ a slash to all of my nodes inside the app! Is that right? Is that considered a good practice? Somehow it does not sound like a good practice to me. I’m more used to have paths of the type “my-path/” or “my-path” but never “/my-path”.
Please tell me if you have any experience on this and whether you think this pattern is common.
---
### Author:  [@KenWhitesell](https://forum.djangoproject.com/u/KenWhitesell)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2024, 6:10pm UTC](https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/best-practice-for-urls-without-trailing-slash/36057/2 "2024-10-29T18:10:52Z")
I can understand why you might not want a trailing slash on your url, but I’m not sure I understand why you would be concerned about a trailing slash on an earlier segment of the url.
`path("api/", include("api.urls")),`
Why is this an issue?
---
### Author:  [@martinberoiz](https://forum.djangoproject.com/u/martinberoiz)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2024, 6:54pm UTC](https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/best-practice-for-urls-without-trailing-slash/36057/3 "2024-10-29T18:54:17Z")
> [@KenWhitesell](#):
>
> Why is this an issue?
This is one of those situations in which I don’t really have a good answer to that, mainly because I’m not sure what other people do. My only motivation was to have this situation:
- `/api`
- `/api/customers`
- `/api/customers/5`
- etc
instead of
- `/api/` (This is the only with a slash)
- `/api/customers`
- `/api/customers/5`
- etc
but maybe it’s just nitpicking?
---
### Author:  [@KenWhitesell](https://forum.djangoproject.com/u/KenWhitesell)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2024, 7:02pm UTC](https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/best-practice-for-urls-without-trailing-slash/36057/4 "2024-10-29T19:02:52Z")
> [@martinberoiz](#):
>
> /api
If that’s really an issue, you could define it twice in your urlpatterns:
```auto
# urls.py
path("api", TemplateView.as_view(template_name="index.html")),
path("api/", include("api.urls")),
```
---
### Author:  [@martinberoiz](https://forum.djangoproject.com/u/martinberoiz)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2024, 7:21pm UTC](https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/best-practice-for-urls-without-trailing-slash/36057/5 "2024-10-29T19:21:53Z")
Yes, I guess that’s a reasonable compromise, although I think I’ll just stick to having `api/`. Thanks for your input, Ken.
---
### Author:  [@IgorArnaut](https://forum.djangoproject.com/u/IgorArnaut)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2026, 4:03pm UTC](https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/best-practice-for-urls-without-trailing-slash/36057/6 "2026-02-23T16:03:12Z")
I have a case against it being a non-issue.
URLs for the `listings` app:
```python
# listings/urls.py
urlpatterns = [
path("", views.listing_list, name="listing-list"),
path("pretraga", views.ListingSearchView.as_view(), name="listing-search"),
path("", views.ListingDetailView.as_view(), name="listing-detail"),
# 4 Authentication & authorization
path("postavka", login_required(views.ListingCreateView.as_view()), name="listing-create"),
path("/izmena", login_required(views.ListingUpdateView.as_view()), name="listing-edit"),
path("/brisanje", login_required(views.listing_delete), name="listing-delete"),
]
```
`listings` URLs are added to project URLs.
```python
urlpatterns = [
path("admin/", admin.site.urls),
path("i18n/", include('django.conf.urls.i18n')),
path("", include("auth2.urls")),
path("oglasi/", include("listings.urls")),
path("korisnici/", include("users.urls")),
]
```
I’m currently on `https://localhost:8000/oglasi/`. Do you think that `/oglasi/?strana=1` looks better than `/oglasi?strana=1`? I don’t think so. How do I make it the other way?
---
### Author:  [@martinberoiz](https://forum.djangoproject.com/u/martinberoiz)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2026, 4:38pm UTC](https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/best-practice-for-urls-without-trailing-slash/36057/7 "2026-02-23T16:38:02Z")
In fact, my initial motivation to have api endpoint _not_ ending with a slash is the use case you present. I wanted to avoid the clashing `/?` (which I personally don’t like). But I see no other compromise than the one suggested above.