``django.contrib.auth``
=======================

This document provides API reference material for the components of Django's
authentication system. For more details on the usage of these components or
how to customize authentication and authorization see the :doc:`authentication
topic guide </topics/auth/index>`.

.. currentmodule:: django.contrib.auth

User
====

Fields
------

.. class:: models.User

    :class:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User` objects have the following
    fields:

    .. attribute:: username

        Required. 30 characters or fewer. Usernames may contain alphanumeric,
        ``_``, ``@``, ``+``, ``.`` and ``-`` characters.

    .. attribute:: first_name

        Optional. 30 characters or fewer.

    .. attribute:: last_name

        Optional. 30 characters or fewer.

    .. attribute:: email

        Optional. Email address.

    .. attribute:: password

        Required. A hash of, and metadata about, the password. (Django doesn't
        store the raw password.) Raw passwords can be arbitrarily long and can
        contain any character. See the :doc:`password documentation
        </topics/auth/passwords>`.

    .. attribute:: groups

        Many-to-many relationship to :class:`~django.contrib.auth.models.Group`

    .. attribute:: user_permissions

         Many-to-many relationship to :class:`~django.contrib.auth.models.Permission`

    .. attribute:: is_staff

        Boolean. Designates whether this user can access the admin site.

    .. attribute:: is_active

        Boolean. Designates whether this user account should be considered
        active. We recommend that you set this flag to ``False`` instead of
        deleting accounts; that way, if your applications have any foreign keys
        to users, the foreign keys won't break.

        This doesn't necessarily control whether or not the user can log in.
        Authentication backends aren't required to check for the ``is_active``
        flag, and the default backends do not. If you want to reject a login
        based on ``is_active`` being ``False``, it's up to you to check that in
        your own login view or a custom authentication backend. However, the
        :class:`~django.contrib.auth.forms.AuthenticationForm` used by the
        :func:`~django.contrib.auth.views.login` view (which is the default)
        *does* perform this check, as do the permission-checking methods such
        as :meth:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User.has_perm` and the
        authentication in the Django admin. All of those functions/methods will
        return ``False`` for inactive users.

    .. attribute:: is_superuser

        Boolean. Designates that this user has all permissions without
        explicitly assigning them.

    .. attribute:: last_login

        A datetime of the user's last login. Is set to the current date/time by
        default.

    .. attribute:: date_joined

        A datetime designating when the account was created. Is set to the
        current date/time by default when the account is created.

Methods
-------

.. class:: models.User

    .. method:: get_username()

        Returns the username for the user. Since the User model can be swapped
        out, you should use  this method instead of referencing the username
        attribute directly.

    .. method:: is_anonymous()

        Always returns ``False``. This is a way of differentiating
        :class:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User` and
        :class:`~django.contrib.auth.models.AnonymousUser` objects.
        Generally, you should prefer using
        :meth:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User.is_authenticated()` to this
        method.

    .. method:: is_authenticated()

        Always returns ``True`` (as opposed to
        ``AnonymousUser.is_authenticated()`` which always returns ``False``).
        This is a way to tell if the user has been authenticated. This does not
        imply any permissions, and doesn't check if the user is active - it
        only indicates that ``request.user`` has been populated by the
        :class:`~django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware` with
        a :class:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User` object representing the
        currently logged-in user.

    .. method:: get_full_name()

        Returns the :attr:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User.first_name` plus
        the :attr:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User.last_name`, with a space in
        between.

    .. method:: set_password(raw_password)

        Sets the user's password to the given raw string, taking care of the
        password hashing. Doesn't save the
        :class:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User` object.

        When the ``raw_password`` is ``None``, the password will be set to an
        unusable password, as if
        :meth:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User.set_unusable_password()`
        were used.

        .. versionchanged:: 1.6

            In Django 1.4 and 1.5, a blank string was unintentionally stored
            as an unsable password.

    .. method:: check_password(raw_password)

        Returns ``True`` if the given raw string is the correct password for
        the user. (This takes care of the password hashing in making the
        comparison.)

        .. versionchanged:: 1.6

            In Django 1.4 and 1.5, a blank string was unintentionally
            considered to be an unusable password, resulting in this method
            returning ``False`` for such a password.

    .. method:: set_unusable_password()

        Marks the user as having no password set.  This isn't the same as
        having a blank string for a password.
        :meth:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User.check_password()` for this user
        will never return ``True``. Doesn't save the
        :class:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User` object.

        You may need this if authentication for your application takes place
        against an existing external source such as an LDAP directory.

    .. method:: has_usable_password()

        Returns ``False`` if
        :meth:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User.set_unusable_password()` has
        been called for this user.

    .. method:: get_group_permissions(obj=None)

        Returns a set of permission strings that the user has, through his/her
        groups.

        If ``obj`` is passed in, only returns the group permissions for
        this specific object.

    .. method:: get_all_permissions(obj=None)

        Returns a set of permission strings that the user has, both through
        group and user permissions.

        If ``obj`` is passed in, only returns the permissions for this
        specific object.

    .. method:: has_perm(perm, obj=None)

        Returns ``True`` if the user has the specified permission, where perm
        is in the format ``"<app label>.<permission codename>"``. (see
        documentation on :ref:`permissions <topic-authorization>`). If the user is
        inactive, this method will always return ``False``.

        If ``obj`` is passed in, this method won't check for a permission for
        the model, but for this specific object.

    .. method:: has_perms(perm_list, obj=None)

        Returns ``True`` if the user has each of the specified permissions,
        where each perm is in the format
        ``"<app label>.<permission codename>"``. If the user is inactive,
        this method will always return ``False``.

        If ``obj`` is passed in, this method won't check for permissions for
        the model, but for the specific object.

    .. method:: has_module_perms(package_name)

        Returns ``True`` if the user has any permissions in the given package
        (the Django app label). If the user is inactive, this method will
        always return ``False``.

    .. method:: email_user(subject, message, from_email=None)

        Sends an email to the user. If ``from_email`` is ``None``, Django uses
        the :setting:`DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL`.

Manager methods
---------------

.. class:: models.UserManager

    The :class:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User` model has a custom manager
    that has the following helper methods (in addition to the methods provided
    by :class:`~django.contrib.auth.models.BaseUserManager`):

    .. method:: create_user(username, email=None, password=None, **extra_fields)

        Creates, saves and returns a :class:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User`.

        The :attr:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User.username` and
        :attr:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User.password` are set as given. The
        domain portion of :attr:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User.email` is
        automatically converted to lowercase, and the returned
        :class:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User` object will have
        :attr:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User.is_active` set to ``True``.

        If no password is provided,
        :meth:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User.set_unusable_password()` will
        be called.

        The ``extra_fields`` keyword arguments are passed through to the
        :class:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User`'s ``__init__`` method to
        allow setting arbitrary fields on a :ref:`custom User model
        <auth-custom-user>`.

        See :ref:`Creating users <topics-auth-creating-users>` for example usage.

    .. method:: create_superuser(self, username, email, password, **extra_fields)

        Same as :meth:`create_user`, but sets :attr:`~models.User.is_staff` and
        :attr:`~models.User.is_superuser` to ``True``.


Anonymous users
===============

.. class:: models.AnonymousUser

    :class:`django.contrib.auth.models.AnonymousUser` is a class that
    implements the :class:`django.contrib.auth.models.User` interface, with
    these differences:

    * :ref:`id <automatic-primary-key-fields>` is always ``None``.
    * :attr:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User.is_staff` and
      :attr:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User.is_superuser` are always
      ``False``.
    * :attr:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User.is_active` is always ``False``.
    * :attr:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User.groups` and
      :attr:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User.user_permissions` are always
      empty.
    * :meth:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User.is_anonymous()` returns ``True``
      instead of ``False``.
    * :meth:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User.is_authenticated()` returns
      ``False`` instead of ``True``.
    * :meth:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User.set_password()`,
      :meth:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User.check_password()`,
      :meth:`~django.db.models.Model.save` and
      :meth:`~django.db.models.Model.delete()` raise
      :exc:`~exceptions.NotImplementedError`.

In practice, you probably won't need to use
:class:`~django.contrib.auth.models.AnonymousUser` objects on your own, but
they're used by Web requests, as explained in the next section.

Permission
==========

.. class:: models.Permission

Fields
------

:class:`~django.contrib.auth.models.Permission` objects have the following
fields:

.. attribute:: name

    Required. 50 characters or fewer. Example: ``'Can vote'``.

.. attribute:: content_type

    Required. A reference to the ``django_content_type`` database table, which
    contains a record for each installed Django model.

.. attribute:: codename

    Required. 100 characters or fewer. Example: ``'can_vote'``.

Methods
-------

:class:`~django.contrib.auth.models.Permission` objects have the standard
data-access methods like any other :doc:`Django model </ref/models/instances>`.

Group
=====

.. class:: models.Group

Fields
------

:class:`~django.contrib.auth.models.Group` objects have the following fields:

.. attribute:: name

    Required. 80 characters or fewer. Any characters are permitted. Example:
    ``'Awesome Users'``.

.. attribute:: permissions

    Many-to-many field to :class:`~django.contrib.auth.models.Permission`::

        group.permissions = [permission_list]
        group.permissions.add(permission, permission, ...)
        group.permissions.remove(permission, permission, ...)
        group.permissions.clear()

.. _topics-auth-signals:

Login and logout signals
========================

.. module:: django.contrib.auth.signals

The auth framework uses the following :doc:`signals </topics/signals>` that
can be used for notification when a user logs in or out.

.. function:: user_logged_in

    Sent when a user logs in successfully.

    Arguments sent with this signal:

    ``sender``
        The class of the user that just logged in.

    ``request``
        The current :class:`~django.http.HttpRequest` instance.

    ``user``
        The user instance that just logged in.

.. function:: user_logged_out

    Sent when the logout method is called.

    ``sender``
        As above: the class of the user that just logged out or ``None``
        if the user was not authenticated.

    ``request``
        The current :class:`~django.http.HttpRequest` instance.

    ``user``
        The user instance that just logged out or ``None`` if the
        user was not authenticated.

.. function:: user_login_failed

    .. versionadded:: 1.5

    Sent when the user failed to login successfully

    ``sender``
        The name of the module used for authentication.

    ``credentials``
        A dictionary of keyword arguments containing the user credentials that were
        passed to :func:`~django.contrib.auth.authenticate()` or your own custom
        authentication backend. Credentials matching a set of 'sensitive' patterns,
        (including password) will not be sent in the clear as part of the signal.

.. _authentication-backends-reference:

Authentication backends
=======================

.. module:: django.contrib.auth.backends
   :synopsis: Django's built-in authentication backend classes.

This section details the authentication backends that come with Django. For
information on how to use them and how to write your own authentication
backends, see the :ref:`Other authentication sources section
<authentication-backends>` of the :doc:`User authentication guide
</topics/auth/index>`.


Available authentication backends
---------------------------------

The following backends are available in :mod:`django.contrib.auth.backends`:

.. class:: ModelBackend

    This is the default authentication backend used by Django.  It
    authenticates using credentials consisting of a user identifier and
    password.  For Django's default user model, the user identifier is the
    username, for custom user models it is the field specified by
    USERNAME_FIELD (see :doc:`Customizing Users and authentication
    </topics/auth/customizing>`).

    It also handles the default permissions model as defined for
    :class:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User` and
    :class:`~django.contrib.auth.models.PermissionsMixin`.

.. class:: RemoteUserBackend

    Use this backend to take advantage of external-to-Django-handled
    authentication.  It authenticates using usernames passed in
    :attr:`request.META['REMOTE_USER'] <django.http.HttpRequest.META>`.  See
    the :doc:`Authenticating against REMOTE_USER </howto/auth-remote-user>`
    documentation.
