How to register users in Django REST framework?

Question

I\'m coding a REST API with Django REST framework. The API will be the backend of a social mobile app. After following the tutorial, I can serialise all my models and I am a

Answer 1

@cpury above suggested using write_only_fields option. This however did not work for me in DRF 3.3.3

In DRF 3.0 the write_only_fields option on ModelSerializer has been moved to PendingDeprecation and in DRF 3.2 replaced with a more generic extra_kwargs:

extra_kwargs = {'password': {'write_only': True}}

Answer 2

I typically treat the User view just like any other API endpoint that required authorization, except I just override the view class's permission set with my own for POST (aka create). I typically use this pattern:

from django.contrib.auth import get_user_model
from rest_framework import viewsets
from rest_framework.permissions import AllowAny


class UserViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
    queryset = get_user_model().objects
    serializer_class = UserSerializer

    def get_permissions(self):
        if self.request.method == 'POST':
            self.permission_classes = (AllowAny,)

        return super(UserViewSet, self).get_permissions()

For good measure, here is the serializer I typically use with it:

class UserSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):

    class Meta:
        model = get_user_model()
        fields = (
            'id',
            'username',
            'password',
            'email',
            ...,
        )
        extra_kwargs = {
            'password': {'write_only': True},
        }

    def create(self, validated_data):
        user = get_user_model().objects.create_user(**validated_data)
        return user

    def update(self, instance, validated_data):
        if 'password' in validated_data:
            password = validated_data.pop('password')
            instance.set_password(password)
        return super(UserSerializer, self).update(instance, validated_data)

djangorestframework 3.3.x / Django 1.8.x

Answer 3

I went ahead and made my own custom view for handling registration since my serializer doesn't expect to show/retrieve the password. I made the url different from the /users resource.

My url conf:

url(r'^users/register', 'myapp.views.create_auth'),

My view:

@api_view(['POST'])
def create_auth(request):
    serialized = UserSerializer(data=request.DATA)
    if serialized.is_valid():
        User.objects.create_user(
            serialized.init_data['email'],
            serialized.init_data['username'],
            serialized.init_data['password']
        )
        return Response(serialized.data, status=status.HTTP_201_CREATED)
    else:
        return Response(serialized._errors, status=status.HTTP_400_BAD_REQUEST)

I may be wrong, but it doesn't seem like you'll need to limit permissions on this view since you'd want unauthenticated requests ...