How to check if a user is logged in (how to properly use user.is_authenticated)?

Question

I am looking over this website but just can\'t seem to figure out how to do this as it\'s not working. I need to check if the current site user is logged in (authenticated),

Answer 1

Django 1.10+

Use an attribute, not a method:

if request.user.is_authenticated: # <-  no parentheses any more!
    # do something if the user is authenticated

The use of the method of the same name is deprecated in Django 2.0, and is no longer mentioned in the Django documentation.

---

Note that for Django 1.10 and 1.11, the value of the property is a CallableBool and not a boolean, which can cause some strange bugs. For example, I had a view that returned JSON

return HttpResponse(json.dumps({
    "is_authenticated": request.user.is_authenticated()
}), content_type='application/json') 

that after updated to the property request.user.is_authenticated was throwing the exception TypeError: Object of type 'CallableBool' is not JSON serializable. The solution was to use JsonResponse, which could handle the CallableBool object properly when serializing:

return JsonResponse({
    "is_authenticated": request.user.is_authenticated
})