How do I check whether this user is anonymous or actually a user on my system?

Question

def index(request):     the_user = request.user 

In Django, how do I know if it's a real user or not? I tried:

if the_user: but "AnonymousUser" is there even if no one logs in. So, it always returns true and this doesn't work.

Answer 1

You can check if request.user.is_anonymous returns True.

Answer 2

An Alternative to

if user.is_anonymous():     # user is anon user 

is by testing to see what the id of the user object is:

if user.id == None:     # user is anon user else:     # user is a real user 

see https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/contrib/auth/#anonymous-users