Django Best Practices: Custom User Model

Django ships with a built-in User model for authentication and if you’d like a basic tutorial on how to implement log in, log out, sign up and so on see the Django Login and Logout tutorial for more.

However, for a real-world project, the official Django documentation highly recommends using a custom user model instead. This provides far more flexibility down the line so, as a general rule, always use a custom user model for all new Django projects.

Setup

$ cd ~/Desktop
$ mkdir accounts && cd accounts
$ pipenv install django~=3.1.0
$ pipenv shell
(accounts) $ django-admin.py startproject config .
(accounts) $ python manage.py startapp accounts
(accounts) $ python manage.py runserver

Custom User Model

# config/settings.py
INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    'accounts', # new
]
...
AUTH_USER_MODEL = 'accounts.CustomUser' # new

Now update accounts/models.py with a new User model which we’ll call CustomUser.

# accounts/models.py
from django.contrib.auth.models import AbstractUser
from django.db import models

class CustomUser(AbstractUser):
    pass
    # add additional fields in here

    def __str__(self):
        return self.username

We need new versions of two form methods that receive heavy use working with users. Stop the local server with Control+c and create a new file in the accounts app called forms.py.

(accounts) $ touch accounts/forms.py

# accounts/forms.py
from django import forms
from django.contrib.auth.forms import UserCreationForm, UserChangeForm
from .models import CustomUser

class CustomUserCreationForm(UserCreationForm):

    class Meta:
        model = CustomUser
        fields = ('username', 'email')

class CustomUserChangeForm(UserChangeForm):

    class Meta:
        model = CustomUser
        fields = ('username', 'email')

Finally we update admin.py since the Admin is highly coupled to the default User model.

# accounts/admin.py
from django.contrib import admin
from django.contrib.auth.admin import UserAdmin

from .forms import CustomUserCreationForm, CustomUserChangeForm
from .models import CustomUser

class CustomUserAdmin(UserAdmin):
    add_form = CustomUserCreationForm
    form = CustomUserChangeForm
    model = CustomUser
    list_display = ['email', 'username',]

admin.site.register(CustomUser, CustomUserAdmin)

(accounts) $ python manage.py makemigrations accounts
(accounts) $ python manage.py migrate

Superuser

(accounts) $ python manage.py createsuperuser

Templates/Views/URLs

# config/settings.py
TEMPLATES = [
    {
        ...
        'DIRS': [str(BASE_DIR.joinpath('templates'))], # new
        ...
    },
]

# config/settings.py
LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL = 'home'
LOGOUT_REDIRECT_URL = 'home'

(accounts) $ mkdir templates
(accounts) $ mkdir templates/registration

(accounts) $ touch templates/registration/login.html
(accounts) $ touch templates/registration/signup.html
(accounts) $ touch templates/base.html
(accounts) $ touch templates/home.html

Now for our urls.py files at the project and app level.

# config/urls.py
from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import path, include
from django.views.generic.base import TemplateView

urlpatterns = [
    path('', TemplateView.as_view(template_name='home.html'), name='home'),
    path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
    path('accounts/', include('accounts.urls')),
    path('accounts/', include('django.contrib.auth.urls')),
]

Create a urls.py file in the accounts app.

(accounts) $ touch accounts/urls.py

# accounts/urls.py
from django.urls import path
from .views import SignUpView

urlpatterns = [
    path('signup/', SignUpView.as_view(), name='signup'),
]

# accounts/views.py
from django.urls import reverse_lazy
from django.views.generic.edit import CreateView

from .forms import CustomUserCreationForm

class SignUpView(CreateView):
    form_class = CustomUserCreationForm
    success_url = reverse_lazy('login')
    template_name = 'registration/signup.html'

The final Result

1 -

2 -

3 -

4 -

5 -

6 -

reading-note

https://eng-ehabsaleh.github.io/reading-note/

Django Best Practices: Custom User Model