Creating a extended user profile

Question

I have an extended UserProfile model in django:

class UserProfile(models.Model):   user = models.ForeignKey(User, unique=True)   #other things in that profile 

And a signals.py:

from registration.signals import user_registered from models import UserProfile from django.contrib.auth.models import User  def createUserProfile(sender, instance, **kwargs):   profile = users.models.UserProfile()   profile.setUser(sender)   profile.save()  user_registered.connect(createUserProfile, sender=User) 

I make sure the signal gets registered by having this in my __init__.py:

import signals 

So that should create me a new UserProfile for every user that registers, right? But it doesn't. I always get "UserProfile matching query does not exist" errors when I try to log in, which means that the database entry isn't there.

I should say that I use django-registration, which provides the user_registered signal.

The structure of the important apps for this is, that I have one application called "users", there I have: models.py, signals.py, urls.py and views.py (and some other things which shouldn't matter here). The UserProfile class is defined in models.py.

Update: I changed the signals.py to:

from django.db.models.signals import post_save from models import UserProfile from django.contrib.auth.models import User  def create_profile(sender, **kw):     user = kw["instance"]     if kw["created"]:         profile = UserProfile()         profile.user = user         profile.save()  post_save.connect(create_profile, sender=User) 

But now I get a "IntegrityError":

"column user_id is not unique"

Edit 2:

I found it. Looks like somehow I registred the signal twice. The workaround for this is described here: http://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/Signals#Helppost_saveseemstobeemittedtwiceforeachsave

I had to add a dispatch_uid, now my signals.py looks like this and is working:

from django.db.models.signals import post_save from django.contrib.auth.models import User from models import UserProfile from django.db import models  def create_profile(sender, **kw):     user = kw["instance"]     if kw["created"]:         profile = UserProfile(user=user)         profile.save()  post_save.connect(create_profile, sender=User, dispatch_uid="users-profilecreation-signal") 

Answer 1

You can implement it using post_save on the user:

from django.db.models.signals import post_save from models import UserProfile from django.contrib.auth.models import User  def create_profile(sender, **kwargs):     user = kwargs["instance"]     if kwargs["created"]:         profile = users.models.UserProfile()         profile.setUser(sender)         profile.save()  post_save.connect(create_profile, sender=User) 

Edit:
Another possible solution, which is tested and works (I'm using it on my site):

from django.db import models from django.contrib.auth.models import User from django.db.models.signals import post_save def create_profile(sender, **kwargs):     user = kwargs["instance"]     if kwargs["created"]:         up = UserProfile(user=user, stuff=1, thing=2)         up.save() post_save.connect(create_profile, sender=User) 

Answer 2

You can get the extended profile to be created when first accessed for each user instead:

from django.db import models from django.contrib.auth.models import User  class UserProfile(models.Model):     user = models.ForeignKey(User, unique=True)     additional_info_field = models.CharField(max_length=50)  User.profile = property(lambda u: UserProfile.objects.get_or_create(user=u)[0]) 

then use

from django.contrib.auth.models import User user = User.objects.get(pk=1) user.profile.additional_info_field 

ref: http://www.codekoala.com/blog/2009/quick-django-tip-user-profiles/