That is a "lambda function". It's a short way of expressing a function that's declared inline. It looks like this:
lambda arg1,arg2,...: expression
and is the equivalent of a nameless function that would look like this:
def some_nameless_function(arg1,arg2,...):
return expression
So, the code you have there,
def validate(request, *args, **kwargs):
form_class = kwargs.pop('form_class')
extra_args_func = kwargs.pop('callback', lambda request, *args, **kwargs: {})
is equivalent to a function that looks like this:
def nameless_function(request, *args, **kwargs):
return {}
def validate(request, *args, **kwargs):
form_class = kwargs.pop('form_class')
extra_args_func = kwargs.pop('callback', nameless_function)