Create staff user in Django

Question

I'm trying to create a staff user in Django with

UserModel.objects.create_user(username="A", email="[email protected]", password="a", is_staff=True)

but in UserManager in Django at https://github.com/django/django/blob/master/django/contrib/auth/models.py it says

class UserManager(BaseUserManager):
    use_in_migrations = True

    def _create_user(self, username, email, password,
                     is_staff, is_superuser, **extra_fields):
        """
        Creates and saves a User with the given username, email and password.
        """
        if not username:
            raise ValueError('The given username must be set')
        email = self.normalize_email(email)
        user = self.model(username=username, email=email,
                          is_staff=is_staff, is_superuser=is_superuser,
                          **extra_fields)
        user.set_password(password)
        user.save(using=self._db)
        return user

    def create_user(self, username, email=None, password=None, **extra_fields):
        return self._create_user(username, email, password, False, False,
                                 **extra_fields)

    def create_superuser(self, username, email, password, **extra_fields):
        return self._create_user(username, email, password, True, True,
                                 **extra_fields)

so when trying to set is_staff = False it will always override this field with is_staff = True unless I use create_superuser instead of create_user; however, create_superuser also sets is_superuser = True.

Have they forgot to create the method create_staff_user in Django? :-)

Answer 1

No, I don't think that 'they' forgot the create_staff_method.

This is the pull request that gave birth to the _create_user method and the reason for doing so is:

don't raise db signals twice when creating superuser

Both create_user and create_superuser methods make use of the same private method. Understanding this, and knowing that there are no true private methods in Python makes utilising _create_user directly an option. But an ugly option.

The create_user method is extra method for your convenience. You are right that calling it with is_staff=True won't give the expected result. I think that is the real bug. The error is:

TypeError: _create_user() got multiple values for keyword argument 'is_staff'

Your code (username is a positional argument):

User.objects.create_user('john', email='[email protected]', password='johnpassword', is_staff=True)

What the documentation on creating users suggest:

user = User.objects.create_user('john', '[email protected]', 'johnpassword')  
user.is_staff=True 
user.save()

But this way we are calling save twice. :/

The UserManager is a subclass of BaseUserManager which is a subclass of Manager. So you can also do:

email = normalize_email('[email protected]')
user = User.objects.create(username='john',
    email=email, is_staff=True )
user.set_password(password)
user.save()

Since explicit is better than implicit and simple is better than complex... I would go for the most basic and simple User.objects.create. Or wait for https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/25009 to land.