Get Started With Django User Management

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December 18, 2024
Get Started With Django User Management
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Django user management allows you to integrate user authentication and management into your web applications. By using Django, you can leverage the framework’s built-in authentication system to manage user registration, login, and logout. With just a few additional templates, you can enable users to reset and change their passwords independently.

This tutorial guides you through setting up a basic user management system with Django that you can extend later. You’ll learn how to create a dashboard, implement user registration, and connect authentication URLs, as well as customize templates for login, logout, and password management.

By the end of this tutorial, you’ll understand that:

  • Django’s user authentication is a built-in authentication system that comes with pre-configured URLs and views.
  • Authentication verifies user identity, while authorization determines user permissions within Django.
  • Registering as a user in Django requires setting up views, templates, and URLs.
  • Creating a login system in Django involves built-in authentication views and creating custom templates.
  • Resetting passwords in Django involves configuring email backends for sending reset links.

This tutorial focuses on user authentication and user management. If you want to learn more about permissions and groups, then you can check out the tutorial about managing users in Django’s admin site.

Start With the Basics

For bigger projects, you may consider creating a custom user model. In this tutorial, you’ll be using Django’s built-in user model. This is a great place to start to familiarize yourself with user authentication in general.

In this section of the tutorial, you’ll first create a small Django project with a users app. Then, you’ll make some adjustments to Django’s password validator to make your development more convenient. Finally, you’ll create an admin user to verify your setup.

Set Up the Django Project

It’s a good idea to use a virtual environment when working with Python projects. That way, you can always be sure that the python command points to the right version of Python and that the modules required by your project have the correct versions. To read more about creating virtual environments, check out Python Virtual Environments: A Primer.

Select your operating system below and use your platform-specific command to set up a virtual environment:

Windows PowerShell 
PS> python -m venv venv\
PS> .\venv\Scripts\activate
(venv) PS>
Shell 
$ python -m venv venv/
$ source venv/bin/activate
(venv) $

With the above commands, you create and activate a virtual environment named venv by using Python’s built-in venv module. The parenthesized (venv) in front of the prompt indicate that you’ve successfully activated the virtual environment.

Now that the environment is ready, you can install Django, start a new project, and create an application to store all your user management code:

Shell 
(venv) $ python -m pip install Django
(venv) $ django-admin startproject user_auth_intro
(venv) $ cd user_auth_intro
(venv) $ python manage.py startapp users

In this example, you name your project user_auth_intro and your application users. To include the users app in your Django project, you need to add a reference to the app’s configuration class at the beginning of the INSTALLED_APPS list in settings.py:

Python user_auth_intro/settings.py 
 1# ...
 2
 3INSTALLED_APPS = [
 4    "users.apps.UsersConfig",
 5    "django.contrib.admin",
 6    "django.contrib.auth",
 7    "django.contrib.contenttypes",
 8    "django.contrib.sessions",
 9    "django.contrib.messages",
10    "django.contrib.staticfiles",
11]
12
13# ...

By adding users.apps.UsersConfig, you let Django know that the users app you just created exists. If you have a look at the INSTALLED_APPS list, then you’ll spot Django’s default authentication system on line 6. In django.contrib.auth, Django stores the core of its authentication framework and the default models that you’ll build on later.

Next, apply the migrations and run the Django development server:

Shell 
(venv) $ python manage.py migrate
(venv) $ python manage.py runserver

These commands create all default models in the database and start the Django development server.

Deactivate the Password Validator

By default, Django enforces strong passwords to make user accounts less prone to attacks. Since you’ll need to change passwords often throughout this tutorial, figuring out a strong password each time would be inconvenient.

Read the full article at https://realpython.com/django-user-management/ »

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December 18, 2024 at 07:30PM
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