title: URLs and Links
---
summary: Explains how to manage URLs and links in templates.
---
sort_key: 10
---
body:

Linking to other pages in templates is achieved through the `|url` and
`|asseturl` filters.  These two filters will ensure that the links that are
generated are automatically relative to the current page so they will work
correctly anywhere where you host the page.  They also deal with URL paths
that have been changed through configuration.

## `url` Filter

The [url :ref](../../api/templates/filters/url/) filter is the most useful
filter for URL generation and it comes in two flavors.  It takes one optional
argument which is the `alt` if it should differ from the current one (see
[Alternatives :ref](../../content/alts/)).  The filter can be applied to either
a string or a [Record :ref](../../api/db/record/) object.

### Basic Navigation

This is an example of how to just link to some specific pages that exist.
Because the path starts with a slash it will be treated as absolute path:

```html+jinja
<ul class="nav">
  <li><a href="{{ '/'|url }}">Index</a>
  <li><a href="{{ '/about'|url }}">About</a>
</ul>
```

### Relative Linking

If you want to link relative to the current page, just leave out the
slash:

```html+jinja
<a href="{{ 'project-a'|url }}">Go To Project A</a>
```

### Link To Alternatives

If you want to link to a page in a different alternative you can use the
optional `alt` parameter.  For instance you can link to the current page
in another alternative (`.` indicates the current page):

```html+jinja
<a href="{{ '.'|url(alt='ru') }}">Русский</a>
```

### Link to Pages

Because the URL filter can also accept entire record objects you can easily
link to all children of a page:

```html+jinja
<ul class="nav">
{% for page in this.children %}
  <li><a href="{{ page|url }}">{{ page.title }}</a>
{% endfor %}
</ul>
```

## `asseturl` Filter

A second filter that is available is the [asseturl
:ref](../../api/templates/filters/asseturl/) filter.  It works similar to
`|url` but can only link to assets from the `assets/` folder.  However unlike
`|url` it will append a dummy query string with a hash of the source asset.
This ensures that when the asset changes it will be newly cached.

Example:

```html+jinja
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ '/static/styles.css'|asseturl }}">
```

The end result will look something like this:

```html
<link rel="stylesheet" href="static/styles.css?h=deadbeef">
```