This document explains the usage of Django's authentication system in its default configuration. This configuration has evolved to serve the most common project needs, handling a reasonably wide range of tasks, and has a careful implementation of passwords and permissions. For projects where authentication needs differ from the default, Django supports extensive extension and customization of authentication.
Django authentication provides both authentication and authorization together and is generally referred to as the authentication system, as these features are somewhat coupled.
User objects¶User objects are the core of the
authentication system. They typically represent the people interacting with
your site and are used to enable things like restricting access, registering
user profiles, associating content with creators etc. Only one class of user
exists in Django's authentication framework, i.e., 'superusers' or admin 'staff' users are just user objects with
special attributes set, not different classes of user objects.
The primary attributes of the default user are:
See the full API documentation for
full reference, the documentation that follows is more task oriented.
The most direct way to create users is to use the included
create_user() helper function:
>>> from django.contrib.auth.models import User
>>> user = User.objects.create_user("john", "lennon@thebeatles.com", "johnpassword")
# At this point, user is a User object that has already been saved
# to the database. You can continue to change its attributes
# if you want to change other fields.
>>> user.last_name = "Lennon"
>>> user.save()
If you have the Django admin installed, you can also create users interactively.
Create superusers using the createsuperuser command:
$ python manage.py createsuperuser --username=joe --email=joe@example.com
...\> py manage.py createsuperuser --username=joe --email=joe@example.com
You will be prompted for a password. After you enter one, the user will be
created immediately. If you leave off the --username or --email options, it will
prompt you for those values.
Django does not store raw (clear text) passwords on the user model, but only a hash (see documentation of how passwords are managed for full details). Because of this, do not attempt to manipulate the password attribute of the user directly. This is why a helper function is used when creating a user.
To change a user's password, you have several options:
manage.py changepassword *username* offers a method
of changing a user's password from the command line. It prompts you to
change the password of a given user which you must enter twice. If
they both match, the new password will be changed immediately. If you
do not supply a user, the command will attempt to change the password
whose username matches the current system user.
You can also change a password programmatically, using
set_password():
>>> from django.contrib.auth.models import User
>>> u = User.objects.get(username="john")
>>> u.set_password("new password")
>>> u.save()
If you have the Django admin installed, you can also change user's passwords on the authentication system's admin pages.
Django also provides views and forms that may be used to allow users to change their own passwords.
Changing a user's password will log out all their sessions. See Session invalidation on password change for details.
Asynchronous version: aauthenticate()
Use authenticate() to verify a set of
credentials. It takes credentials as keyword arguments, username and
password for the default case, checks them against each
authentication backend, and returns a
User object if the credentials are
valid for a backend. If the credentials aren't valid for any backend or if
a backend raises PermissionDenied, it
returns None. For example:
from django.contrib.auth import authenticate
user = authenticate(username="john", password="secret")
if user is not None:
# A backend authenticated the credentials
...
else:
# No backend authenticated the credentials
...
request is an optional HttpRequest which is
passed on the authenticate() method of the authentication backends.
Note
This is a low level way to authenticate a set of credentials; for
example, it's used by the
RemoteUserMiddleware. Unless
you are writing your own authentication system, you probably won't use
this. Rather if you're looking for a way to login a user, use the
LoginView.
aauthenticate() function was added.
Django uses sessions and middleware to hook the
authentication system into request objects.
These provide a request.user attribute
and a request.auser async method
on every request which represents the current user. If the current user has not
logged in, this attribute will be set to an instance
of AnonymousUser, otherwise it will be an
instance of User.
You can tell them apart with
is_authenticated, like so:
if request.user.is_authenticated:
# Do something for authenticated users.
...
else:
# Do something for anonymous users.
...
Or in an asynchronous view:
user = await request.auser()
if user.is_authenticated:
# Do something for authenticated users.
...
else:
# Do something for anonymous users.
...
The HttpRequest.auser() method was added.
If you have an authenticated user you want to attach to the current session
- this is done with a login() function.
Asynchronous version: alogin()
To log a user in, from a view, use login(). It
takes an HttpRequest object and a
User object.
login() saves the user's ID in the session,
using Django's session framework.
Note that any data set during the anonymous session is retained in the session after a user logs in.
This example shows how you might use both
authenticate() and
login():
from django.contrib.auth import authenticate, login
def my_view(request):
username = request.POST["username"]
password = request.POST["password"]
user = authenticate(request, username=username, password=password)
if user is not None:
login(request, user)
# Redirect to a success page.
...
else:
# Return an 'invalid login' error message.
...
alogin() function was added.
When a user logs in, the user's ID and the backend that was used for authentication are saved in the user's session. This allows the same authentication backend to fetch the user's details on a future request. The authentication backend to save in the session is selected as follows:
Use the value of the optional backend argument, if provided.
Use the value of the user.backend attribute, if present. This allows
pairing authenticate() and
login():
authenticate()
sets the user.backend attribute on the user object it returns.
Use the backend in AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS, if there is only
one.
Otherwise, raise an exception.
In cases 1 and 2, the value of the backend argument or the user.backend
attribute should be a dotted import path string (like that found in
AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS), not the actual backend class.
Asynchronous version: alogout()
To log out a user who has been logged in via
django.contrib.auth.login(), use
django.contrib.auth.logout() within your view. It takes an
HttpRequest object and has no return value.
Example:
from django.contrib.auth import logout
def logout_view(request):
logout(request)
# Redirect to a success page.
Note that logout() doesn't throw any errors if
the user wasn't logged in.
When you call logout(), the session data for
the current request is completely cleaned out. All existing data is
removed. This is to prevent another person from using the same web browser
to log in and have access to the previous user's session data. If you want
to put anything into the session that will be available to the user
immediately after logging out, do that after calling
django.contrib.auth.logout().
alogout() function was added.
The raw way to limit access to pages is to check
request.user.is_authenticated and either redirect to a
login page:
from django.conf import settings
from django.shortcuts import redirect
def my_view(request):
if not request.user.is_authenticated:
return redirect(f"{settings.LOGIN_URL}?next={request.path}")
# ...
...or display an error message:
from django.shortcuts import render
def my_view(request):
if not request.user.is_authenticated:
return render(request, "myapp/login_error.html")
# ...
login_required decorator¶As a shortcut, you can use the convenient
login_required() decorator:
from django.contrib.auth.decorators import login_required
@login_required
def my_view(request):
...
login_required() does the following:
If the user isn't logged in, redirect to
settings.LOGIN_URL, passing the current absolute
path in the query string. Example: /accounts/login/?next=/polls/3/.
If the user is logged in, execute the view normally. The view code is free to assume the user is logged in.
By default, the path that the user should be redirected to upon
successful authentication is stored in a query string parameter called
"next". If you would prefer to use a different name for this parameter,
login_required() takes an
optional redirect_field_name parameter:
from django.contrib.auth.decorators import login_required
@login_required(redirect_field_name="my_redirect_field")
def my_view(request):
...
Note that if you provide a value to redirect_field_name, you will most
likely need to customize your login template as well, since the template
context variable which stores the redirect path will use the value of
redirect_field_name as its key rather than "next" (the default).
login_required() also takes an
optional login_url parameter. Example:
from django.contrib.auth.decorators import login_required
@login_required(login_url="/accounts/login/")
def my_view(request):
...
Note that if you don't specify the login_url parameter, you'll need to
ensure that the settings.LOGIN_URL and your login
view are properly associated. For example, using the defaults, add the
following lines to your URLconf:
from django.contrib.auth import views as auth_views
path("accounts/login/", auth_views.LoginView.as_view()),
The settings.LOGIN_URL also accepts view function
names and named URL patterns. This allows you
to freely remap your login view within your URLconf without having to
update the setting.
Note
The login_required decorator does NOT check the is_active flag on a
user, but the default AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS reject inactive
users.
See also
If you are writing custom views for Django's admin (or need the same
authorization check that the built-in views use), you may find the
django.contrib.admin.views.decorators.staff_member_required()
decorator a useful alternative to login_required().
LoginRequiredMixin mixin¶When using class-based views, you can
achieve the same behavior as with login_required by using the
LoginRequiredMixin. This mixin should be at the leftmost position in the
inheritance list.
If a view is using this mixin, all requests by non-authenticated users will
be redirected to the login page or shown an HTTP 403 Forbidden error,
depending on the
raise_exception parameter.
You can set any of the parameters of
AccessMixin to customize the handling
of unauthorized users:
from django.contrib.auth.mixins import LoginRequiredMixin
class MyView(LoginRequiredMixin, View):
login_url = "/login/"
redirect_field_name = "redirect_to"
Note
Just as the login_required decorator, this mixin does NOT check the
is_active flag on a user, but the default
AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS reject inactive users.
To limit access based on certain permissions or some other test, you'd do essentially the same thing as described in the previous section.
You can run your test on request.user in
the view directly. For example, this view checks to make sure the user has an
email in the desired domain and if not, redirects to the login page:
from django.shortcuts import redirect
def my_view(request):
if not request.user.email.endswith("@example.com"):
return redirect("/login/?next=%s" % request.path)
# ...
As a shortcut, you can use the convenient user_passes_test decorator
which performs a redirect when the callable returns False:
from django.contrib.auth.decorators import user_passes_test
def email_check(user):
return user.email.endswith("@example.com")
@user_passes_test(email_check)
def my_view(request):
...
user_passes_test() takes a required
argument: a callable that takes a
User object and returns True if
the user is allowed to view the page. Note that
user_passes_test() does not
automatically check that the User is
not anonymous.
user_passes_test() takes two
optional arguments:
login_urlLets you specify the URL that users who don't pass the test will be
redirected to. It may be a login page and defaults to
settings.LOGIN_URL if you don't specify one.
redirect_field_nameSame as for login_required().
Setting it to None removes it from the URL, which you may want to do
if you are redirecting users that don't pass the test to a non-login
page where there's no "next page".
For example:
@user_passes_test(email_check, login_url="/login/")
def my_view(request):
...
When using class-based views, you
can use the UserPassesTestMixin to do this.
You have to override the test_func() method of the class to
provide the test that is performed. Furthermore, you can set any of the
parameters of AccessMixin to
customize the handling of unauthorized users:
from django.contrib.auth.mixins import UserPassesTestMixin
class MyView(UserPassesTestMixin, View):
def test_func(self):
return self.request.user.email.endswith("@example.com")
You can also override the get_test_func() method to have the mixin
use a differently named function for its checks (instead of
test_func()).
Stacking UserPassesTestMixin
Due to the way UserPassesTestMixin is implemented, you cannot stack
them in your inheritance list. The following does NOT work:
class TestMixin1(UserPassesTestMixin):
def test_func(self):
return self.request.user.email.endswith("@example.com")
class TestMixin2(UserPassesTestMixin):
def test_func(self):
return self.request.user.username.startswith("django")
class MyView(TestMixin1, TestMixin2, View):
...
If TestMixin1 would call super() and take that result into
account, TestMixin1 wouldn't work standalone anymore.
permission_required decorator¶It's a relatively common task to check whether a user has a particular
permission. For that reason, Django provides a shortcut for that case: the
permission_required() decorator:
from django.contrib.auth.decorators import permission_required
@permission_required("polls.add_choice")
def my_view(request):
...
Just like the has_perm() method,
permission names take the form "<app label>.<permission codename>"
(i.e. polls.add_choice for a permission on a model in the polls
application).
The decorator may also take an iterable of permissions, in which case the user must have all of the permissions in order to access the view.
Note that permission_required()
also takes an optional login_url parameter:
from django.contrib.auth.decorators import permission_required
@permission_required("polls.add_choice", login_url="/loginpage/")
def my_view(request):
...
As in the login_required() decorator,
login_url defaults to settings.LOGIN_URL.
If the raise_exception parameter is given, the decorator will raise
PermissionDenied, prompting the 403
(HTTP Forbidden) view instead of redirecting to the
login page.
If you want to use raise_exception but also give your users a chance to
login first, you can add the
login_required() decorator:
from django.contrib.auth.decorators import login_required, permission_required
@login_required
@permission_required("polls.add_choice", raise_exception=True)
def my_view(request):
...
This also avoids a redirect loop when LoginView's
redirect_authenticated_user=True and the logged-in user doesn't have
all of the required permissions.
PermissionRequiredMixin mixin¶To apply permission checks to class-based views, you can use the PermissionRequiredMixin:
This mixin, just like the permission_required
decorator, checks whether the user accessing a view has all given
permissions. You should specify the permission (or an iterable of
permissions) using the permission_required parameter:
from django.contrib.auth.mixins import PermissionRequiredMixin
class MyView(PermissionRequiredMixin, View):
permission_required = "polls.add_choice"
# Or multiple of permissions:
permission_required = ["polls.view_choice", "polls.change_choice"]
You can set any of the parameters of
AccessMixin to customize the handling
of unauthorized users.
You may also override these methods:
Returns an iterable of permission names used by the mixin. Defaults to
the permission_required attribute, converted to a tuple if
necessary.
Returns a boolean denoting whether the current user has permission to
execute the decorated view. By default, this returns the result of
calling has_perms() with the
list of permissions returned by get_permission_required().
Django provides several views that you can use for handling login, logout, and password management. These make use of the stock auth forms but you can pass in your own forms as well.
Django provides no default template for the authentication views. You should create your own templates for the views you want to use. The template context is documented in each view, see All authentication views.
There are different methods to implement these views in your project. The
easiest way is to include the provided URLconf in django.contrib.auth.urls
in your own URLconf, for example:
urlpatterns = [
path("accounts/", include("django.contrib.auth.urls")),
]
This will include the following URL patterns:
accounts/login/ [name='login']
accounts/logout/ [name='logout']
accounts/password_change/ [name='password_change']
accounts/password_change/done/ [name='password_change_done']
accounts/password_reset/ [name='password_reset']
accounts/password_reset/done/ [name='password_reset_done']
accounts/reset/<uidb64>/<token>/ [name='password_reset_confirm']
accounts/reset/done/ [name='password_reset_complete']
The views provide a URL name for easier reference. See the URL documentation for details on using named URL patterns.
If you want more control over your URLs, you can reference a specific view in your URLconf:
from django.contrib.auth import views as auth_views
urlpatterns = [
path("change-password/", auth_views.PasswordChangeView.as_view()),
]
The views have optional arguments you can use to alter the behavior of the
view. For example, if you want to change the template name a view uses, you can
provide the template_name argument. A way to do this is to provide keyword
arguments in the URLconf, these will be passed on to the view. For example:
urlpatterns = [
path(
"change-password/",
auth_views.PasswordChangeView.as_view(template_name="change-password.html"),
),
]
All views are class-based, which allows you to easily customize them by subclassing.
This is a list with all the views django.contrib.auth provides. For
implementation details see Using the views.
URL name: login
See the URL documentation for details on using named URL patterns.
Methods and Attributes
The name of a template to display for the view used to log the user in.
Defaults to registration/login.html.
The URL to redirect to after login. Defaults to
LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL.
The name of a GET field containing the URL to redirect to after
login. Defaults to next. Overrides the
get_default_redirect_url() URL if the given GET parameter is
passed.
A callable (typically a form class) to use for authentication. Defaults
to AuthenticationForm.
A dictionary of context data that will be added to the default context data passed to the template.
A boolean that controls whether or not authenticated users accessing
the login page will be redirected as if they had just successfully
logged in. Defaults to False.
Warning
If you enable redirect_authenticated_user, other websites will
be able to determine if their visitors are authenticated on your
site by requesting redirect URLs to image files on your website. To
avoid this "social media fingerprinting" information
leakage, host all images and your favicon on a separate domain.
Enabling redirect_authenticated_user can also result in a
redirect loop when using the permission_required() decorator
unless the raise_exception parameter is used.
A set of hosts, in addition to request.get_host(), that are safe for redirecting
after login. Defaults to an empty set.
Returns the URL to redirect to after login. The default implementation
resolves and returns next_page if set, or
LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL otherwise.
Here's what LoginView does:
If called via GET, it displays a login form that POSTs to the
same URL. More on this in a bit.
If called via POST with user submitted credentials, it tries to log
the user in. If login is successful, the view redirects to the URL
specified in next. If next isn't provided, it redirects to
settings.LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL (which
defaults to /accounts/profile/). If login isn't successful, it
redisplays the login form.
It's your responsibility to provide the html for the login template
, called registration/login.html by default. This template gets passed
four template context variables:
form: A Form object representing the
AuthenticationForm.
next: The URL to redirect to after successful login. This may
contain a query string, too.
site: The current Site,
according to the SITE_ID setting. If you don't have the
site framework installed, this will be set to an instance of
RequestSite, which derives the
site name and domain from the current
HttpRequest.
site_name: An alias for site.name. If you don't have the site
framework installed, this will be set to the value of
request.META['SERVER_NAME'].
For more on sites, see The "sites" framework.
If you'd prefer not to call the template registration/login.html,
you can pass the template_name parameter via the extra arguments to
the as_view method in your URLconf. For example, this URLconf line would
use myapp/login.html instead:
path("accounts/login/", auth_views.LoginView.as_view(template_name="myapp/login.html")),
You can also specify the name of the GET field which contains the URL
to redirect to after login using redirect_field_name. By default, the
field is called next.
Here's a sample registration/login.html template you can use as a
starting point. It assumes you have a base.html template that
defines a content block:
{% extends "base.html" %}
{% block content %}
{% if form.errors %}
<p>Your username and password didn't match. Please try again.</p>
{% endif %}
{% if next %}
{% if user.is_authenticated %}
<p>Your account doesn't have access to this page. To proceed,
please login with an account that has access.</p>
{% else %}
<p>Please login to see this page.</p>
{% endif %}
{% endif %}
<form method="post" action="{% url 'login' %}">
{% csrf_token %}
<table>
<tr>
<td>{{ form.username.label_tag }}</td>
<td>{{ form.username }}</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>{{ form.password.label_tag }}</td>
<td>{{ form.password }}</td>
</tr>
</table>
<input type="submit" value="login">
<input type="hidden" name="next" value="{{ next }}">
</form>
{# Assumes you set up the password_reset view in your URLconf #}
<p><a href="{% url 'password_reset' %}">Lost password?</a></p>
{% endblock %}
If you have customized authentication (see Customizing Authentication) you can use a custom authentication form by
setting the authentication_form attribute. This form must accept a
request keyword argument in its __init__() method and provide a
get_user() method which returns the authenticated user object (this
method is only ever called after successful form validation).
Logs a user out on POST requests.
URL name: logout
Attributes:
The URL to redirect to after logout. Defaults to
LOGOUT_REDIRECT_URL.
The full name of a template to display after logging the user out.
Defaults to registration/logged_out.html.
The name of a GET field containing the URL to redirect to after log
out. Defaults to 'next'. Overrides the
next_page URL if the given GET parameter is
passed.
A dictionary of context data that will be added to the default context data passed to the template.
A set of hosts, in addition to request.get_host(), that are safe for redirecting
after logout. Defaults to an empty set.
Template context:
title: The string "Logged out", localized.
site: The current Site,
according to the SITE_ID setting. If you don't have the
site framework installed, this will be set to an instance of
RequestSite, which derives the
site name and domain from the current
HttpRequest.
site_name: An alias for site.name. If you don't have the site
framework installed, this will be set to the value of
request.META['SERVER_NAME'].
For more on sites, see The "sites" framework.
Logs a user out on POST requests, then redirects to the login page.
URL name: No default URL provided
Optional arguments:
login_url: The URL of the login page to redirect to.
Defaults to settings.LOGIN_URL if not supplied.
URL name: password_change
Allows a user to change their password.
Attributes:
The full name of a template to use for displaying the password change
form. Defaults to registration/password_change_form.html if not
supplied.
The URL to redirect to after a successful password change. Defaults to
'password_change_done'.
A custom "change password" form which must accept a user keyword
argument. The form is responsible for actually changing the user's
password. Defaults to
PasswordChangeForm.
A dictionary of context data that will be added to the default context data passed to the template.
Template context:
form: The password change form (see form_class above).
URL name: password_change_done
The page shown after a user has changed their password.
Attributes:
The full name of a template to use. Defaults to
registration/password_change_done.html if not supplied.
A dictionary of context data that will be added to the default context data passed to the template.
URL name: password_reset
Allows a user to reset their password by generating a one-time use link that can be used to reset the password, and sending that link to the user's registered email address.
This view will send an email if the following conditions are met:
The email address provided exists in the system.
The requested user is active (User.is_active is True).
The requested user has a usable password. Users flagged with an unusable
password (see
set_unusable_password()) aren't
allowed to request a password reset to prevent misuse when using an
external authentication source like LDAP.
If any of these conditions are not met, no email will be sent, but the
user won't receive any error message either. This prevents information
leaking to potential attackers. If you want to provide an error message in
this case, you can subclass
PasswordResetForm and use the
form_class attribute.
Note
Be aware that sending an email costs extra time, hence you may be vulnerable to an email address enumeration timing attack due to a difference between the duration of a reset request for an existing email address and the duration of a reset request for a nonexistent email address. To reduce the overhead, you can use a 3rd party package that allows to send emails asynchronously, e.g. django-mailer.
Attributes:
The full name of a template to use for displaying the password reset
form. Defaults to registration/password_reset_form.html if not
supplied.
Form that will be used to get the email of the user to reset the
password for. Defaults to
PasswordResetForm.
The full name of a template to use for generating the email with the
reset password link. Defaults to
registration/password_reset_email.html if not supplied.
The full name of a template to use for the subject of the email with
the reset password link. Defaults to
registration/password_reset_subject.txt if not supplied.
Instance of the class to check the one time link. This will default to
default_token_generator, it's an instance of
django.contrib.auth.tokens.PasswordResetTokenGenerator.
The URL to redirect to after a successful password reset request.
Defaults to 'password_reset_done'.
A valid email address. By default Django uses the
DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL.
A dictionary of context data that will be added to the default context data passed to the template.
The full name of a template to use for generating a text/html multipart email with the password reset link. By default, HTML email is not sent.
A dictionary of context data that will be available in the email
template. It can be used to override default template context values
listed below e.g. domain.
Template context:
form: The form (see form_class above) for resetting the user's
password.
Email template context:
email: An alias for user.email
user: The current User,
according to the email form field. Only active users are able to
reset their passwords (User.is_active is True).
site_name: An alias for site.name. If you don't have the site
framework installed, this will be set to the value of
request.META['SERVER_NAME'].
For more on sites, see The "sites" framework.
domain: An alias for site.domain. If you don't have the site
framework installed, this will be set to the value of
request.get_host().
protocol: http or https
uid: The user's primary key encoded in base 64.
token: Token to check that the reset link is valid.
Sample registration/password_reset_email.html (email body template):
Someone asked for password reset for email {{ email }}. Follow the link below:
{{ protocol}}://{{ domain }}{% url 'password_reset_confirm' uidb64=uid token=token %}
The same template context is used for subject template. Subject must be single line plain text string.
URL name: password_reset_done
The page shown after a user has been emailed a link to reset their
password. This view is called by default if the PasswordResetView
doesn't have an explicit success_url URL set.
Note
If the email address provided does not exist in the system, the user is inactive, or has an unusable password, the user will still be redirected to this view but no email will be sent.
Attributes:
The full name of a template to use. Defaults to
registration/password_reset_done.html if not supplied.
A dictionary of context data that will be added to the default context data passed to the template.
URL name: password_reset_confirm
Presents a form for entering a new password.
Keyword arguments from the URL:
uidb64: The user's id encoded in base 64.
token: Token to check that the password is valid.
Attributes:
The full name of a template to display the confirm password view.
Default value is registration/password_reset_confirm.html.
Instance of the class to check the password. This will default to
default_token_generator, it's an instance of
django.contrib.auth.tokens.PasswordResetTokenGenerator.
A boolean indicating if the user should be automatically authenticated
after a successful password reset. Defaults to False.
A dotted path to the authentication backend to use when authenticating
a user if post_reset_login is True. Required only if you have
multiple AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS configured. Defaults to
None.
Form that will be used to set the password. Defaults to
SetPasswordForm.
URL to redirect after the password reset done. Defaults to
'password_reset_complete'.
A dictionary of context data that will be added to the default context data passed to the template.
Token parameter displayed as a component of password reset URLs.
Defaults to 'set-password'.
Template context:
form: The form (see form_class above) for setting the new user's
password.
validlink: Boolean, True if the link (combination of uidb64 and
token) is valid or unused yet.
URL name: password_reset_complete
Presents a view which informs the user that the password has been successfully changed.
Attributes:
The full name of a template to display the view. Defaults to
registration/password_reset_complete.html.
A dictionary of context data that will be added to the default context data passed to the template.
Redirects to the login page, and then back to another URL after a successful login.
Required arguments:
next: The URL to redirect to after a successful login.
Optional arguments:
login_url: The URL of the login page to redirect to.
Defaults to settings.LOGIN_URL if not supplied.
redirect_field_name: The name of a GET field containing the
URL to redirect to after log out. Overrides next if the given
GET parameter is passed.
If you don't want to use the built-in views, but want the convenience of not
having to write forms for this functionality, the authentication system
provides several built-in forms located in django.contrib.auth.forms:
Note
The built-in authentication forms make certain assumptions about the user model that they are working with. If you're using a custom user model, it may be necessary to define your own forms for the authentication system. For more information, refer to the documentation about using the built-in authentication forms with custom user models.
A form used in the admin interface to change a user's password.
Takes the user as the first positional argument.
A form for logging a user in.
Takes request as its first positional argument, which is stored on the
form instance for use by sub-classes.
By default, AuthenticationForm rejects users whose is_active
flag is set to False. You may override this behavior with a custom
policy to determine which users can log in. Do this with a custom form
that subclasses AuthenticationForm and overrides the
confirm_login_allowed() method. This method should raise a
ValidationError if the given user may
not log in.
For example, to allow all users to log in regardless of "active" status:
from django.contrib.auth.forms import AuthenticationForm
class AuthenticationFormWithInactiveUsersOkay(AuthenticationForm):
def confirm_login_allowed(self, user):
pass
(In this case, you'll also need to use an authentication backend that
allows inactive users, such as
AllowAllUsersModelBackend.)
Or to allow only some active users to log in:
class PickyAuthenticationForm(AuthenticationForm):
def confirm_login_allowed(self, user):
if not user.is_active:
raise ValidationError(
_("This account is inactive."),
code="inactive",
)
if user.username.startswith("b"):
raise ValidationError(
_("Sorry, accounts starting with 'b' aren't welcome here."),
code="no_b_users",
)
A form for allowing a user to change their password.
A form for generating and emailing a one-time use link to reset a user's password.
Uses the arguments to send an EmailMultiAlternatives.
Can be overridden to customize how the email is sent to the user.
subject_template_name -- the template for the subject.
email_template_name -- the template for the email body.
context -- context passed to the subject_template,
email_template, and html_email_template (if it is not
None).
from_email -- the sender's email.
to_email -- the email of the requester.
html_email_template_name -- the template for the HTML body;
defaults to None, in which case a plain text email is sent.
By default, save() populates the context with the
same variables that
PasswordResetView passes to its
email context.
A form that lets a user change their password without entering the old password.
A form used in the admin interface to change a user's information and permissions.
A ModelForm for creating a new user. This is the
recommended base class if you need to customize the user creation form.
It has three fields: username (from the user model), password1,
and password2. It verifies that password1 and password2 match,
validates the password using
validate_password(), and
sets the user's password using
set_password().
Inherits from BaseUserCreationForm. To help prevent confusion with
similar usernames, the form doesn't allow usernames that differ only in
case.
The currently logged-in user and their permissions are made available in the
template context when you use
RequestContext.
Technicality
Technically, these variables are only made available in the template
context if you use RequestContext and the
'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth' context processor is
enabled. It is in the default generated settings file. For more, see the
RequestContext docs.
When rendering a template RequestContext, the
currently logged-in user, either a User
instance or an AnonymousUser instance, is
stored in the template variable {{ user }}:
{% if user.is_authenticated %}
<p>Welcome, {{ user.username }}. Thanks for logging in.</p>
{% else %}
<p>Welcome, new user. Please log in.</p>
{% endif %}
This template context variable is not available if a RequestContext is not
being used.
The currently logged-in user's permissions are stored in the template variable
{{ perms }}. This is an instance of
django.contrib.auth.context_processors.PermWrapper, which is a
template-friendly proxy of permissions.
Evaluating a single-attribute lookup of {{ perms }} as a boolean is a proxy
to User.has_module_perms(). For example, to check if
the logged-in user has any permissions in the foo app:
{% if perms.foo %}
Evaluating a two-level-attribute lookup as a boolean is a proxy to
User.has_perm(). For example,
to check if the logged-in user has the permission foo.add_vote:
{% if perms.foo.add_vote %}
Here's a more complete example of checking permissions in a template:
{% if perms.foo %}
<p>You have permission to do something in the foo app.</p>
{% if perms.foo.add_vote %}
<p>You can vote!</p>
{% endif %}
{% if perms.foo.add_driving %}
<p>You can drive!</p>
{% endif %}
{% else %}
<p>You don't have permission to do anything in the foo app.</p>
{% endif %}
It is possible to also look permissions up by {% if in %} statements.
For example:
{% if 'foo' in perms %}
{% if 'foo.add_vote' in perms %}
<p>In lookup works, too.</p>
{% endif %}
{% endif %}
When you have both django.contrib.admin and django.contrib.auth
installed, the admin provides a convenient way to view and manage users,
groups, and permissions. Users can be created and deleted like any Django
model. Groups can be created, and permissions can be assigned to users or
groups. A log of user edits to models made within the admin is also stored and
displayed.
You should see a link to "Users" in the "Auth" section of the main admin index page. The "Add user" admin page is different than standard admin pages in that it requires you to choose a username and password before allowing you to edit the rest of the user's fields.
Also note: if you want a user account to be able to create users using the Django admin site, you'll need to give them permission to add users and change users (i.e., the "Add user" and "Change user" permissions). If an account has permission to add users but not to change them, that account won't be able to add users. Why? Because if you have permission to add users, you have the power to create superusers, which can then, in turn, change other users. So Django requires add and change permissions as a slight security measure.
Be thoughtful about how you allow users to manage permissions. If you give a non-superuser the ability to edit users, this is ultimately the same as giving them superuser status because they will be able to elevate permissions of users including themselves!
User passwords are not displayed in the admin (nor stored in the database), but the password storage details are displayed. Included in the display of this information is a link to a password change form that allows admins to change user passwords.
Jan 15, 2024