permission_required decorator not working for me

Question

I can't figure out why the permission required decorator isn't working. I would like to allow access to a view only for staff members. I have tried

@permission_required('request.user.is_staff',login_url="../admin")
def series_info(request):
  ...

and also

@permission_required('user.is_staff',login_url="../admin")
def series_info(request):
  ...

As the superuser, I can access the view, but any users I create as staff can't access it and are redirected to the login url page. I tested the login_required decorator and that works fine.

Answer 1

permission_required() must be passed a permission name, not a Python expression in a string. Try this instead:

from contrib.auth.decorators import user_passes_test
def staff_required(login_url=None):
    return user_passes_test(lambda u: u.is_staff, login_url=login_url)

@staff_required(login_url="../admin")
def series_info(request)
...

---

Thanks. That does work. Do you have an example of how to use permission_required? From the documentation docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.0/… and djangobook.com/en/2.0/chapter14 I thought what I had should work.

Re-read the links you posted; permission_required() will test if a user has been granted a particular permission. It does not test the attributes of the user object.

From http://www.djangobook.com/en/2.0/chapter14/:

def vote(request):
    if request.user.is_authenticated() and request.user.has_perm('polls.can_vote'):
        # vote here
    else:
        return HttpResponse("You can't vote in this poll.")

   #
   #
 # # #
  ###
   #

def user_can_vote(user):
    return user.is_authenticated() and user.has_perm("polls.can_vote")

@user_passes_test(user_can_vote, login_url="/login/")
def vote(request):
    # vote here

   #
   #
 # # #
  ###
   #

from django.contrib.auth.decorators import permission_required

@permission_required('polls.can_vote', login_url="/login/")
def vote(request):
    # vote here

Answer 2

This is how I would do it:

from django.contrib.admin.views.decorators import staff_member_required

@staff_member_required
def series_info(request):
    ...

The documentation says about staff_member_required:

Decorator for views that checks that the user is logged in and is a staff member, displaying the login page if necessary.