5 Steps to Create a Sitemap in Django

A sitemap is a file where we provide information about the web pages and other files of our site. Search engines like Google, Bing, etc. read this file to crawl our site.
It is an XML file that holds a complete list of page URLs for a site along with other additional details (metadata of each URL, when it was last updated etc.). Its primary purpose is to inform search engines about pages on your sites that are available for crawling.
Sitemap is very helpful to increase your website's rank on Google.

Today I will show you how can you create an XML sitemap of your Django website easily. If you are using Django for web development then you don't require any 3rd party tool to generate a sitemap for your website. It's a super easy task to make a sitemap in Django. I will keep things as simple as possible and explain the whole procedure step by step.

Step 1

In the settings.py file add
'django.contrib.sites' & 'django.contrib.sitemaps' in INSTALLED_APPS list and make a variable SITE_ID=1 under INSTALLED_APPS list as shown below :

#in settings.py

INSTALLED_APPS=[
.
.
'django.contrib.sites',
'django.contrib.sitemaps',
]
SITE_ID=1

Now, run the migrate command :
python manage.py migrate

Step 2

Create a sitemaps.py file in any app and write the code as shown below :
 

#in sitemaps.py

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

class PostSitemap(Sitemap):
    def items(self):
       return Post.objects.all()
 

Here I take an example of a blog app. I have just imported the Post model class from the blog (you can use import * if you have more than 1 model).
Always remember that you have to make 1 class in sitemaps.py (of any name, here PostSitemap) for each table (model) and define a "items" function in this class which will return all objects from the table.

Step 3

In the urls.py file make a dictionary sitemap and put all the class objects (from sitemaps.py) in it and assign a URL pattern for your website's sitemap in the URL patterns list as shown below -

from django.contrib.sitemaps.views import sitemap
from app.sitemaps import PostSitemap
sitemaps={
'Posts':PostSitemap,

#put all sitemaps in this dictionary }

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

For this case, the sitemap will be shown when we use the URL
example.com/sitemap.xml

Step 4

In each and every model class which you want to include in the sitemap, you have to put a get_absolute_url function.
 

from django.urls import reverse
class Post(models.Model):
    .
    .
    .
    def get_absolute_url(self):
       return ('description',args=[str(self.id)])

The above code will work for an url something like this :
example.com/description/1

If the URL uses parameters/arguments then you have to pass these arguments in the "args" list in the "get_absolute_url" function.

Step 5

Now open the Django admin app and move to the Sites table to add and save a record for your website.