As of Django 1.3 the {% url %} tag properly supports:

{% url view_name_variable %}
{% url 'view_name_string' %}

…this becomes the default behaviour in Django 1.5.

Previously, you had only the option to do this:

{% url view_name_string %}

To get the tag to work in this way in Django 1.3 and 1.4 projects, you will need the following line to the top of every template you use it in:

{% load url from future %}

According to the Django 1.3 release notes:

…in Django 1.5, the old behavior will be replaced with the new behavior. To ensure compatibility with future versions of Django, existing templates should be modified to use the new future libraries and syntax.

Note: this answer is only really relevant to versions of django before 1.3. If you are using django 1.3 or later, the required functionality is built-in – please see meshy’s answer.

The built-in url tag cannot do this. However django-reversetag does exactly this (and more).

According to the readme, the reverse tag provided by this code provides:

• Consistent syntax (“string literals” and variables)
• Ability to reverse view names stored in context variables
• Partial reversing

if you are using Django 1.5 and up, django-reversetags is not required anymore for just passing view names as variables into templates, to be used within the url tag.

I was confused with the availability of django-reversetags, just thought of updating the matter correctly here.

binithb