Difference between User.objects.create_user() vs User.objects.create() vs User().save() in django

Question

In the Django documentation, it uses User.objects.create_user() to create a user. I am confused, what is the difference between that and User.objects.create() and User().save() which are the normal ways to create objects of other models

Answer 1

The most significant difference is that if you supply a password to the .create() method, it will be set verbatim on the user, and will not be usable to authenticate the user.

>>> user = User.objects.create(username="foo", password="bar")
>>> user.password
'bar'
>>> user.check_password("bar")
False

Instead, the create_user() method hashes the password argument, which is then.

>>> user = User.objects.create_user(username="foo", password="bar")
>>> user.password
'pbkdf2_sha256$120000$2pHBVu3tYYbK$ESG1nbUY2ZhEmstJ7Fzu1DioXmGYXiLw31YDkOGn9E0='
>>> user.check_password("bar")
True

See https://github.com/django/django/blob/master/django/contrib/auth/models.py#L145.

Some other 'tidying' is also done. See the rest of the function linked above.

Answer 2

User.objects.create_user() is a helper function that provides helpful utilities to create a user that otherwise you would have to do yourself. As per the documentation:

Creates, saves and returns a User

The username and password are set as given. The domain portion of email is automatically converted to lowercase, and the returned User object will have is_active set to True.

If no password is provided, set_unusable_password() will be called.

The extra_fields keyword arguments are passed through to the User’s __init__ method to allow setting arbitrary fields on a custom user model.

Without create_user() you could create the functionality yourself using the methods you mentioned, but it provides useful processing and utility.