Extending the User model with custom fields in Django

Question

What\'s the best way to extend the User model (bundled with Django\'s authentication app) with custom fields? I would also possibly like to use the email as the username (fo

Answer 1

Well, some time passed since 2008 and it's time for some fresh answer. Since Django 1.5 you will be able to create custom User class. Actually, at the time I'm writing this, it's already merged into master, so you can try it out.

There's some information about it in docs or if you want to dig deeper into it, in this commit.

All you have to do is add AUTH_USER_MODEL to settings with path to custom user class, which extends either AbstractBaseUser (more customizable version) or AbstractUser (more or less old User class you can extend).

For people that are lazy to click, here's code example (taken from docs):

from django.db import models
from django.contrib.auth.models import (
    BaseUserManager, AbstractBaseUser
)


class MyUserManager(BaseUserManager):
    def create_user(self, email, date_of_birth, password=None):
        """
        Creates and saves a User with the given email, date of
        birth and password.
        """
        if not email:
            raise ValueError('Users must have an email address')

        user = self.model(
            email=MyUserManager.normalize_email(email),
            date_of_birth=date_of_birth,
        )

        user.set_password(password)
        user.save(using=self._db)
        return user

    def create_superuser(self, username, date_of_birth, password):
        """
        Creates and saves a superuser with the given email, date of
        birth and password.
        """
        u = self.create_user(username,
                        password=password,
                        date_of_birth=date_of_birth
                    )
        u.is_admin = True
        u.save(using=self._db)
        return u


class MyUser(AbstractBaseUser):
    email = models.EmailField(
                        verbose_name='email address',
                        max_length=255,
                        unique=True,
                    )
    date_of_birth = models.DateField()
    is_active = models.BooleanField(default=True)
    is_admin = models.BooleanField(default=False)

    objects = MyUserManager()

    USERNAME_FIELD = 'email'
    REQUIRED_FIELDS = ['date_of_birth']

    def get_full_name(self):
        # The user is identified by their email address
        return self.email

    def get_short_name(self):
        # The user is identified by their email address
        return self.email

    def __unicode__(self):
        return self.email

    def has_perm(self, perm, obj=None):
        "Does the user have a specific permission?"
        # Simplest possible answer: Yes, always
        return True

    def has_module_perms(self, app_label):
        "Does the user have permissions to view the app `app_label`?"
        # Simplest possible answer: Yes, always
        return True

    @property
    def is_staff(self):
        "Is the user a member of staff?"
        # Simplest possible answer: All admins are staff
        return self.is_admin