Extending User profile in Django 1.7

Question

I know, this question has been already asked many times in SO, but most of the answers I read were either outdated (advising the now deprecated AUTH__PROFILE_MODULE method), or were lacking of a concrete example.

So, I read the Django documentation [1,2], but I lack a real example on how to use it properly.

In fact, my problem comes when a new user is created (or updated) through a form. The user is obviously created but, the fields from the extension are all unset. I know that the Django documentation is stating that:

These profile models are not special in any way - they are just Django models that happen to have a one-to-one link with a User model. As such, they do not get auto created when a user is created, but a django.db.models.signals.post_save could be used to create or update related models as appropriate.

But, I don't know how to do it in practice (should I add a a receiver and if 'yes', which one).

For now, I have the following (taken from the documentation for the sake of brevity):

File models.py

from django.contrib.auth.models import User

class Employee(models.Model):
  user = models.OneToOneField(User)
  department = models.CharField(max_length=100)

File admin.py

from django.contrib import admin
from django.contrib.auth.admin import UserAdmin
from django.contrib.auth.models import User

from my_user_profile_app.models import Employee

# Define an inline admin descriptor for Employee model
class EmployeeInline(admin.StackedInline):
  model = Employee
  can_delete = False
  verbose_name_plural = 'employee'

# Define a new User admin
class UserAdmin(UserAdmin):
  inlines = (EmployeeInline, )

# Re-register UserAdmin
admin.site.unregister(User)
admin.site.register(User, UserAdmin)

File forms.py

class SignupForm(account.forms.SignupForm):
  department = forms.CharField(label="Department", max_length=100)

class SettingsForm(account.forms.SignupForm):
  department = forms.CharField(label="Department", max_length=100)

Then, in my code, I use it like this:

u = User.objects.get(username='fsmith')
freds_department = u.employee.department

But, Signup and Settings forms do not operates as expected and new values for the departement is not recorded.

Any hint is welcome !

Answer 1

I have looked at all the answers but none does really hold the solution for my problem (though some of you gave me quite good hints for looking in the right direction). I will summarize here the solution I have found to solve my problem.

First of all, I have to admit I didn't tell everything about my problem. I wanted to insert extra fields in the User model and use other apps such as the default authentication scheme of Django. So, extending the default User by inheritance and setting AUTH_USER_MODEL was a problem because the other Django applications were stopping to work properly (I believe they didn't use user = models.OneToOneField(settings.AUTH_USER_MODEL) but user = models.OneToOneField(User)).

As, it would have been too long to rewrite properly the other applications I am using, I decided to add this extra field through a One-to-One field. But, the documentation miss several points that I would like to fill in the following.

So, here is a complete example of adding an extra field to the User model with other applications using the same model.

First, write the description of the model gathering the extra fields that you want to add to your models.py file:

from django.contrib.auth.models import User

class UserProfile(models.Model):
  user = models.OneToOneField(User)

  extra_field = models.CharField(max_length=100)

Then, we need to trigger the addition of an object UserProfile each time a User is created. This is done through attaching this code to the proper signal in the receiver.py file:

from django.contrib.auth.models import User
from django.db.models.signals import post_save
from django.dispatch import receiver

from my_user_profile_app.models import UserProfile

@receiver(post_save, sender=User)
def handle_user_save(sender, instance, created, **kwargs):
  if created:
    UserProfile.objects.create(user=instance)

Now, if you want to be able to modify it through the administration interface, just stack it with the usual UserAdmin form in the admin.py file.

from django.contrib import admin
from django.contrib.auth.admin import UserAdmin
from django.contrib.auth.models import User

from my_user_profile_app.models import UserProfile

# Define an inline admin descriptor for UserProfile model
class UserProfileInline(admin.StackedInline):
  model = UserProfile
  can_delete = False

# Define a new User admin
class UserAdmin(UserAdmin):
  inlines = (UserProfileInline, )

# Re-register UserAdmin
admin.site.unregister(User)
admin.site.register(User, UserAdmin)

Then, it is time now to try to mix this extra field with the default Django authentication application. For this, we need to add an extra field to fill in the SignupForm and the SettingsForm through inheritance in the forms.py file:

import account.forms
from django import forms

class SignupForm(account.forms.SignupForm):
  extra_field = forms.CharField(label="Extra Field", max_length=100)

class SettingsForm(account.forms.SignupForm):
  extra_field = forms.CharField(label="Extra Field", max_length=100)

And, we also need to add some code to display and get properly the data that you have been added to the original User model. This is done through inheritance onto the SignupView and the SettingsView views in the views.py file:

import account.views

from my_user_profile_app.forms import Settings, SignupForm
from my_user_profile_app.models import UserProfile


class SettingsView(account.views.SettingsView):
  form_class = SettingsForm

  def get_initial(self):
    initial = super(SettingsView, self).get_initial()

    initial["extra_field"] = self.request.user.extra_field

    return initial

  def update_settings(self, form):
    super(SettingsView, self).update_settings(form)

    profile = self.request.user.userprofile
    profile.extra_field = form_cleaned_data['extra_field']
    profile.save()


class SignupView(account.views.SignupView):
  form_class = SignupForm

  def after_signup(self, form):
    profile = self.created_user.userprofile
    profile.extra_field = form_cleaned_data['extra_field']
    profile.save()

    super(SignupView, self).after_signup(form)

Once everything is in place, it should work nicely (hopefully).

Answer 2

I struggled with this topic for about a year off and on until I finally found a solution I was happy with, and I know exactly what you mean by "there is a lot out there, but it doesn't work". I had tried extending the User model in different ways, I had tried the UserProfile method, and some other 1-off solutions as well.

I finally figured out how to simply extend the AbstractUser class to create my custom user model which has been a great solution for many of my projects.

So, let me clarify one of your comments above, you really shouldn't be creating a link between 2 models, the generally accepted "best" solution is to have one model which is inherited from AbstractUser or AbstractBaseUser depending on your needs.

One tricky thing that got me was that "Extending the User Model" did not get me where I wanted and I needed to Substitute the User Model, which I'm sure you've seen/read multiple times, but possibly not absorbed it (at least I know I didn't).

Once you get the hang of it, there's really not that much code and it's not too complicated either.

# models.py
from django.contrib.auth.models import AbstractUser
from django.db import models

class User(AbstractUser):
    '''
    Here is your User class which is fully customizable and
    based off of the AbstractUser from auth.models
    '''
    my_custom_field = models.CharField(max_length=20)

    def my_custom_model_method(self):
        # do stuff
        return True

There are a couple things to look out for after this, some of which came up in django 1.7.

First of all, if you want the admin page to look like it did before, you have to use the UserAdmin

# admin.py
from django.contrib import admin
from django.contrib.auth import get_user_model
from django.contrib.auth.admin import UserAdmin

# Register your models here.
admin.site.register(get_user_model(), UserAdmin)

The other thing is that if you're wanting to import the User class in a models file, you have to import it from the settings and not with get_user_model(). If you run into this, it's easy to fix, so I just wanted to give you a heads up.

You can check out my seed project I use to start projects to get a full but simple project that uses a Custom User Model. The User stuff is in the main app.

From there all the Registration and Login stuff works the same way as with a normal Django User, so I won't go into detail on that topic. I hope this helps you as much as it has helped me!

Answer 3

I try to avoid to extend the user model as explained in the django docs.

I use this:

class UserExtension(models.Model):
    user=models.OneToOneField(User, primary_key=True)
    ... your extra model fields come here

Docs of OneToOneField: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.7/topics/db/examples/one_to_one/

I see these benefits:

• the same pattern works for other models (e.g. Group)
• If you have N apps, every app can extend the model on his own.

Creating the UserExtension should be possible without giving parameters. All fields must have sane defaults.

Then you can create a signal handler which creates UserExtension instances if a user gets created.

Answer 4

I prefer extend the User model. For example:

class UserProfile(User):
    def __unicode__(self):
         return self.last_name + self.first_name

    department = models.CharField(max_length=100)


class SignupForm(forms.Form):
    username = forms.CharField(max_length=30)
    first_name = forms.CharField(max_length=30)
    last_name = forms.CharField(max_length=30)
    department = forms.CharField(label="Department", max_length=100)

To save the data

form = UserRegistrationForm(request.POST)
    if form.is_valid():

    client = UserProfile()
    client.username = username
    client.set_password(password)
    client.first_name = first_name
    client.department = department
    client.save()

check how are you saving the data after validate the form