<p>I am currently defining regular expressions in order to capture parameters in a URL, as described in the tutorial. How do I access parameters from the URL as part the <code>HttpRequest</code> object?</p>
<p>My <code>HttpRequest.GET</code> currently returns an empty <code>QueryDict</code> object.</p>
<p>I'd like to learn how to do this without a library, so I can get to know Django better.</p>

When a URL is like
```
domain/search/?q=haha
```
, you would use
```
request.GET.get('q', '')
```
.
```
q
```
is the parameter you want, and
```
''
```
is the default value if
```
q
```
isn't found.
However, if you are instead just configuring your
```
URLconf
```
**, then your captures from the
```
regex
```
are passed to the function as arguments (or named arguments).
Such as:
```
```
(r'^user/(?P<username>\w{0,50})/$', views.profile_page,),
```
```
Then in your
```
views.py
```
you would have
```
```
def profile_page(request, username):
    # Rest of the method
```
```