Extending the User model with custom fields in Django

Question

What's the best way to extend the User model (bundled with Django's authentication app) with custom fields? I would also possibly like to use the email as the username (for authentication purposes).

I've already seen a few ways to do it, but can't decide on which one is the best.

Answer 1

Note: this answer is deprecated. see other answers if you are using Django 1.7 or later.

This is how I do it.

#in models.py from django.contrib.auth.models import User from django.db.models.signals import post_save  class UserProfile(models.Model):       user = models.OneToOneField(User)       #other fields here      def __str__(self):             return "%s's profile" % self.user    def create_user_profile(sender, instance, created, **kwargs):       if created:          profile, created = UserProfile.objects.get_or_create(user=instance)    post_save.connect(create_user_profile, sender=User)   #in settings.py AUTH_PROFILE_MODULE = 'YOURAPP.UserProfile' 

This will create a userprofile each time a user is saved if it is created. You can then use

  user.get_profile().whatever 

Here is some more info from the docs

http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/auth/#storing-additional-information-about-users

Update: Please note that AUTH_PROFILE_MODULE is deprecated since v1.5: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.5/ref/settings/#auth-profile-module

Answer 2

The least painful and indeed Django-recommended way of doing this is through a OneToOneField(User) property.

Extending the existing User model

…

If you wish to store information related to User, you can use a one-to-one relationship to a model containing the fields for additional information. This one-to-one model is often called a profile model, as it might store non-auth related information about a site user.

That said, extending django.contrib.auth.models.User and supplanting it also works...

Substituting a custom User model

Some kinds of projects may have authentication requirements for which Django’s built-in User model is not always appropriate. For instance, on some sites it makes more sense to use an email address as your identification token instead of a username.

[Ed: Two warnings and a notification follow, mentioning that this is pretty drastic.]

I would definitely stay away from changing the actual User class in your Django source tree and/or copying and altering the auth module.