Django's logout function remove locale settings

Question

When I use Django's logout function to log out an authenticated user, it switched locale to en_US, the default one.

from django.contrib.auth import logout

def someview(request):
    logout(request)
    return HttpResponseRedirect('/')

How to keep user's locale after logged out?

Answer 1

I solved the problem by wrapping the django.contrib.auth.views.logout within a custom view and resetting the session language after logout. There's some code.

I have an app named login with following urls.py:

# myproject/login/urls.py
from django.conf.urls.defaults import patterns

urlpatterns = patterns('myproject.login.views',
    ...
    (r'^logout/$', 'logoutAction'),
    ...
)

So now URL /logout/ calls a view named logoutAction in views.py. In logoutAction, the old language code is stored temporarily and inserted back to the session after calling Django's contrib.auth.views.logout.

# myproject/login/views.py
...
from django.contrib.auth.views import logout as auth_logout

def logoutAction(request):
    # Django auth logout erases all session data, including the user's
    # current language. So from the user's point of view, the change is
    # somewhat odd when he/she arrives to next page. Lets try to fix this.

    # Store the session language temporarily if the language data exists.
    # Its possible that it doesn't, for example if session middleware is
    # not used. Define language variable and reset to None so it can be
    # tested later even if session has not django_language.
    language = None
    if hasattr(request, 'session'):
        if 'django_language' in request.session:
            language = request.session['django_language']

    # Do logout. This erases session data, including the locale language and
    # returns HttpResponseRedirect to the login page. In this case the login
    # page is located at '/'
    response = auth_logout(request, next_page='/')

    # Preserve the session language by setting it again. The language might
    # be None and if so, do nothing special.
    if language:
        request.session['django_language'] = language

    # Now user is happy.
    return response

The end of the LAN Quake problem :)

Answer 2

You could try explicitly setting the language cookie when the user logs out, there's a bit about how django determines the language setting here in the djangodocs.

I would have presumed that the language setting would have remained as a session value on logging out, maybe it needs to be reinitialised if django completely destroys the session on logging out the user.