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

Here's what we do. It isn't a "complete" solution, but it does much of what you're looking for.

from django import forms
from django.contrib import admin
from django.contrib.auth.admin import UserAdmin
from django.contrib.auth.models import User

class UserForm(forms.ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = User
        exclude = ('email',)
    username = forms.EmailField(max_length=64,
                                help_text="The person's email address.")
    def clean_email(self):
        email = self.cleaned_data['username']
        return email

class UserAdmin(UserAdmin):
    form = UserForm
    list_display = ('email', 'first_name', 'last_name', 'is_staff')
    list_filter = ('is_staff',)
    search_fields = ('email',)

admin.site.unregister(User)
admin.site.register(User, UserAdmin)

Answer 2

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, "<stvrong>Error</strong> User account has not been activated..")
        else:
            messages.info(request, "<strong>Error</strong> 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.

<form method="post" class="form-login" action="{% url 'login' %}?next={{ request.GET.next }}" accept-charset="UTF-8">

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.

Answer 3

you can also find an interesting discussion on this topic at the below link :

http://groups.google.com/group/django-users/browse_thread/thread/c943ede66e6807c/2fbf2afeade397eb#2fbf2afeade397eb

Answer 4

For anyone else wanting to do this, I'd recommend taking a look at django-email-as-username which is a pretty comprehensive solution, that includes patching up the admin and the createsuperuser management commands, amongst other bits and pieces.

Edit: As of Django 1.5 onwards you should consider using a custom user model instead of django-email-as-username.

Answer 5

Other alternatives look too complex for me, so I wrote a snippet that allows to authenticate using username, email, or both, and also enable or disable case sensitive. I uploaded it to pip as django-dual-authentication.

from django.contrib.auth.backends import ModelBackend
from django.contrib.auth import get_user_model
from django.conf import settings

###################################
"""  DEFAULT SETTINGS + ALIAS   """
###################################


try:
    am = settings.AUTHENTICATION_METHOD
except:
    am = 'both'
try:
    cs = settings.AUTHENTICATION_CASE_SENSITIVE
except:
    cs = 'both'

#####################
"""   EXCEPTIONS  """
#####################


VALID_AM = ['username', 'email', 'both']
VALID_CS = ['username', 'email', 'both', 'none']

if (am not in VALID_AM):
    raise Exception("Invalid value for AUTHENTICATION_METHOD in project "
                    "settings. Use 'username','email', or 'both'.")

if (cs not in VALID_CS):
    raise Exception("Invalid value for AUTHENTICATION_CASE_SENSITIVE in project "
                    "settings. Use 'username','email', 'both' or 'none'.")

############################
"""  OVERRIDDEN METHODS  """
############################


class DualAuthentication(ModelBackend):
    """
    This is a ModelBacked that allows authentication
    with either a username or an email address.
    """

    def authenticate(self, username=None, password=None):
        UserModel = get_user_model()
        try:
            if ((am == 'email') or (am == 'both')):
                if ((cs == 'email') or cs == 'both'):
                    kwargs = {'email': username}
                else:
                    kwargs = {'email__iexact': username}

                user = UserModel.objects.get(**kwargs)
            else:
                raise
        except:
            if ((am == 'username') or (am == 'both')):
                if ((cs == 'username') or cs == 'both'):
                    kwargs = {'username': username}
                else:
                kwargs = {'username__iexact': username}

                user = UserModel.objects.get(**kwargs)
        finally:
            try:
                if user.check_password(password):
                    return user
            except:
                # Run the default password hasher once to reduce the timing
                # difference between an existing and a non-existing user.
                UserModel().set_password(password)
                return None

    def get_user(self, username):
        UserModel = get_user_model()
        try:
            return UserModel.objects.get(pk=username)
        except UserModel.DoesNotExist:
            return None

Answer 6

I think the most quickly way is to create a form inherit from UserCreateForm, and then override the username field with forms.EmailField. Then for every new registration user, they need to signon with their email address.

For example:

urls.py

...
urlpatterns += url(r'^signon/$', SignonView.as_view(), name="signon")

views.py

from django.contrib.auth.models import User
from django.contrib.auth.forms import UserCreationForm
from django import forms

class UserSignonForm(UserCreationForm):
    username = forms.EmailField()


class SignonView(CreateView):
    template_name = "registration/signon.html"
    model = User
    form_class = UserSignonForm

signon.html

...
<form action="#" method="post">
    ...
    <input type="email" name="username" />
    ...
</form>
...