Accepting email address as username in Django

Question

Is there a good way to do this in django without rolling my own authentication system? I want the username to be the user\'s email address instead of them creating a userna

Answer 1

The easiest way is to lookup the username based on the email in the login view. That way you can leave everything else alone:

from django.contrib.auth import authenticate, login as auth_login

def _is_valid_email(email):
    from django.core.validators import validate_email
    from django.core.exceptions import ValidationError
    try:
        validate_email(email)
        return True
    except ValidationError:
        return False

def login(request):

    next = request.GET.get('next', '/')

    if request.method == 'POST':
        username = request.POST['username'].lower()  # case insensitivity
        password = request.POST['password']

    if _is_valid_email(username):
        try:
            username = User.objects.filter(email=username).values_list('username', flat=True)
        except User.DoesNotExist:
            username = None
    kwargs = {'username': username, 'password': password}
    user = authenticate(**kwargs)

        if user is not None:
            if user.is_active:
                auth_login(request, user)
                return redirect(next or '/')
            else:
                messages.info(request, "Error User account has not been activated..")
        else:
            messages.info(request, "Error Username or password was incorrect.")

    return render_to_response('accounts/login.html', {}, context_instance=RequestContext(request))

In your template set the next variable accordingly, i.e.

And give your username / password inputs the right names, i.e. username, password.

UPDATE:

Alternatively, the if _is_valid_email(email): call can be replaced with if '@' in username. That way you can drop the _is_valid_email function. This really depends on how you define your username. It will not work if you allow the '@' character in your usernames.