Django CSRF check failing with an Ajax POST request

Question

I could use some help complying with Django\'s CSRF protection mechanism via my AJAX post. I\'ve followed the directions here:

http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/r

Answer 1

The accepted answer is most likely a red herring. The difference between Django 1.2.4 and 1.2.5 was the requirement for a CSRF token for AJAX requests.

I came across this problem on Django 1.3 and it was caused by the CSRF cookie not being set in the first place. Django will not set the cookie unless it has to. So an exclusively or heavily ajax site running on Django 1.2.4 would potentially never have sent a token to the client and then the upgrade requiring the token would cause the 403 errors.

The ideal fix is here: http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/contrib/csrf/#page-uses-ajax-without-any-html-form
but you'd have to wait for 1.4 unless this is just documentation catching up with the code

Edit

Note also that the later Django docs note a bug in jQuery 1.5 so ensure you are using 1.5.1 or later with the Django suggested code: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/csrf/#ajax