[Answer]-Django redirect – why is page HTML appearing as URL param?

Please, read again the doc of django and the reverse method:

in your views.py

def index(request):
  return render(request, "app/index.html")

def user(request):
  return render(request, "app/user.html")

def userLogin(request):
    loginUser = authenticate(username = request.POST["username"], password = request.POST["password"])     
    if loginUser is not None:
      if loginUser.is_active:
        login(request, loginUser)
        return HttpResponseRedirect(reverse("user")) #See that! it's a url name!
    return HttpResponse(reverse("index")) # What happens if can't log in?

in your urls.py

urlpatterns = patterns("",
  url(r'^$', views.index, name = "index"),
  url(r'^user/$', views.user, name="user"), #Note the "user"!
  url(r'^registerNewUser/$', views.registerNewUser),
  url(r'^userLogin/$', views.userLogin),
)

Here’s the solution that worked for me. It consisted of using reverse() with HttpResponse().

Specifically,

def index(request):
  return render(request, "app/index.html")

def user(request):
  if request.user.is_authenticated:
    if not request.user.is_staff:
        return render(request, "app/user.html")
    else:
        return render(request, "app/admin.html")

  else: 
    return HttpResponse(reverse(index))

def userLogin(request):
  loginUser = authenticate(username = request.POST["username"], password = request.POST["password"])

  if loginUser is not None:
    if not loginUser.is_active:
        loginUser.is_active = True
        loginUser.save()

    login(request, loginUser)

    #Note HttpResponse and unquoted user method
    return HttpResponse(reverse(user)) 
else:
    return HttpResponse(simplejson.dumps({"login" : "failed"}))

combined with the following urls.py configuration

urlpatterns = patterns("",
  url(r'^$', views.index, name = "index"),
  url(r'^$', views.user, name = "user"),
  url(r'^user/$', views.user, name = "user"),
  url(r'^registerNewUser/$', views.registerNewUser),
  url(r'^userLogin/$', views.userLogin),
)

got the redirect working to the relevant pages after a successful login or registration.