Django: 'str' object has no attribute 'user'

Question

This is my code for the view:

@login_required
def get_top(type):
    o = Work.objects.filter(types = "Fan Fiction").order_by("-date_updated")[:10]
    list = []
    for o in o:
        l.title = o.title
        l.href = "/" + o.id
        list.append(l)
    return l

@login_required
def main_home(request):
    fanfiction = get_top("ff")
    poetry = get_top("pw")
    originalwork = get_top("ow")
    return render_to_response("Main/main_home.html", {'STATIC_URL':STATIC_URL, "poetry":poetry, "fan":fanfiction, "original":originalwork})

This is the code for the model:

class Work(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=30)
    summery = models.TextField()
    user = models.ForeignKey(User)
    date_published = models.DateField()
    date_updated = models.DateField()
    one_shot = models.BooleanField()
    completed = models.BooleanField()
    TYPES = (
        ('FF', 'Fan Fiction'),
        ('OF', 'Original Work'),
        ('PW', 'Poetry Work'),
        )
    types = models.CharField(max_length=2, choices=TYPES)
    fandom1 = models.ForeignKey(Book, blank = True, null= True, related_name='f_1')
    fandom2 = models.ForeignKey(Book, blank = True, null= True, related_name='f_2')
    def __unicode__(self):
    return self.title + '-' + self.user.email

This is the error: 'str' object has no attribute 'user' at "get_top("ff")"

Answer 1

Please remove @login_required decorator for get_top method.

What this is trying to do is, @login_required tries to verify if that user is logged in or not. this is trying to find a User object instance in ff which is a str hence the stacktrace. Normally @login_required gets User from request obj, but since you are not passing that in get_top hence the error.

My suggestion is you should maintain a certain set of methods in views.py which are linked to the API urls in urls.py some of these might require @login_required. other set of methods are helper method (like get_top). these are not exposed to outside world (hence no need for @login_required).

In case you must expose get_top both internally and externally, then your first parameter to get_top has to be request object then followed by other params.