Why is Django admin login giving me 403 CSRF error?

Question

I am running Django 1.2.2 and I get the following error when I try to log in to the Django admin:

Forbidden (403) CSRF verification failed. Request aborted.

Reason given for failure:

No CSRF or session cookie.

** I have made NO customization to the barebones admin and when I inspect the source there is a CSRF token in the form in what I believe is the correct place.

When I look at the actual request that is being sent there is a csrf token being sent but Django still says CSRF verification failed.

Can anyone point me in the right direction? Why is this happening?

Answer 1

I've had the same problem on Django 1.2.1 FINAL. Since I knew that Django on our production site would never be updated from 1.0 (for various reasons), I found a workaround which I implemented into my development version of settings.py, leaving the production settings.py untouched.

Create a middleware.py file in your application directory with the following code:

class disableCSRF:
    def process_request(self, request):
        setattr(request, '_dont_enforce_csrf_checks', True)
        return None

Then in your development version of settings.py, insert this into MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES:

'your_app_name.middleware.disableCSRF',

Perhaps not the safest solution, but our Django site is strictly internal, so there is a minimum risk for any type of malicious actions. This solution is simple and doesn't involve changes to templates/views, and it worked instantly (unlike other I've tried).

Hopefully someone in a similar situation to mine will find this useful.

Credit goes to John McCollum, on whose site I've found this.

Answer 2

1) Do you have 'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware' in your settings.MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES ?

2) Are you sure you've always been on 1.2.2? That only came out last night...

Answer 3

According to the docs, not only do you need the csrf hidden form field, but also the csrftoken cookie. The error message you provided also suggests a missing cookie.

I would look in your browser's cookies to ensure the csrftoken cookie is present.