How can I use Django permissions without defining a content type or model?

Question

I\'d like to use a permissions based system to restrict certain actions within my Django application. These actions need not be related to a particular model (e.g. access to sec

Answer 1

You can use the proxy model for this with a dummy content type.

from django.contrib.auth.models import Permission
from django.contrib.contenttypes.models import ContentType


class CustomPermission(Permission):

    class Meta:
        proxy = True

    def save(self, *args, **kwargs):
        ct, created = ContentType.objects.get_or_create(
            model=self._meta.verbose_name, app_label=self._meta.app_label,
        )
        self.content_type = ct
        super(CustomPermission, self).save(*args)

Now you can create the permission with just name and codename of the permission from the CustomPermission model.

 CustomPermission.objects.create(name='Can do something', codename='can_do_something')

And you can query and display only the custom permissions in your templates like this.

 CustomPermission.objects.filter(content_type__model='custom permission')