Usage¶
The package works by creating temporary user accounts based on a user’s
session key whenever a flagged view is requested. You can specify which
views trigger this behaviour using the lazysignup.decorators.allow_lazy_user
decorator.
When an anonymous user requests such a view, a temporary user account will be
created for them, and they will be logged in. The user account will have
an unusable password set, so that it can’t be used to log in as a regular
user. The way to tell a regular use from a temporary user is to call
the is_lazy_user()
function from lazysignup.templatetags.lazysignup_tags
.
If this returns True
, then the user is temporary. Note that
user.is_anonymous()
will return False
and user.is_authenticated()
will return True
. See below for more information on is_lazy_user
.
A view is provided to allow such users to convert their temporary account into a real user account by providing a username and a password.
A Django management command is provided to clear out stale, unconverted user accounts - although this depends on your use of database-backed sessions, and assumes that all user accounts with an expired session are safe to delete. This may not be the case for all apps, so you may wish to provide your own cleaning script.
The allow_lazy_user
decorator¶
Use this decorator to indicate that accessing the view should cause anonymous users to have temporary accounts created for them.
For example:
from django.http import HttpResponse
from lazysignup.decorators import allow_lazy_user
@allow_lazy_user
def my_view(request):
return HttpResponse(request.user.username)
When accessing the above view, a very simple response containing the generated username will be displayed.
The require_lazy_user
and require_nonlazy_user
decorators¶
It is also possible to mark views as requiring only a lazily-created user,
or requiring only a non-lazy user, with the require_lazy_user
and
require_nonlazy_user
decorators respectively. These decorators take
arguments and keyword arguments which are passed verbatim to Django’s own
redirect
view.
The is_lazy_user
template filter¶
This template filter (which can also be imported from lazysignup.utils
and used in your own code) will return True if the user is a generated user.
You need to pass it the user to test. For example, a site navigation
template might look like this:
{% load i18n lazysignup_tags %}
<nav id="account-bar">
<ul>
<li><a href="{% url home %}">{% trans "Home" %}</a></li>
{% if not user|is_lazy_user %}
<li><a href="#">{% trans "Account" %}</a></li>
<li><a href="{% url auth_logout %}">{% trans "Log out" %}</a></li>
{% else %}
<li><a href="{% url lazysignup_convert %}">{% trans "Save your data" %}</a> {% trans "by setting a username and password" %}</li>
{% endif %}
</ul>
</nav>
This filter is very simple, and can be used directly in view code, or tests. For example:
from lazysignup.utils import is_lazy_user
def testIsLazyUserAnonymous(self):
user = AnonymousUser()
self.assertEqual(False, is_lazy_user(user))
Note that as of version 0.6.0, the user tested no longer needs to have been
authenticated by the LazySignupBackend
for lazy user detection to work.
User agent blacklisting¶
The middleware will not create users for certain requests from blacklisted user agents. This is simply a fairly crude method for preventing many spurious users being created by passing search engines.
The blacklist is specified with the USER_AGENT_BLACKLIST
setting. This
should be an iterable of regular expression strings. If the user agent string
of a request matches a regex (search()
is used, so the match can be anywhere
in the string) then a user will not be created.
If the list is not specified, then the default is as follows
- slurp
- googlebot
- yandex
- msnbot
- baiduspider
Specifying your own USER_AGENT_BLACKLIST
will replace this list.
Using the convert view¶
Users will be able to visit the /convert/
view. This provides a form with
a username, password and password confirmation. As long as they fill in valid
details, their temporary user account will be converted into a real user
account that they can log in with as usual.
You may specify your own form class into the convert view in order to customise user creation. The code requires expects the following:
- It expects to be able to create the form passing in the generated
User
object with aninstance
kwarg (in general, this is fine when using a ModelForm based on the User model)- It expects to be able to call
save()
on the form to convert the user to a real user- It expects to be able to call a
get_credentials()
method on the form to obtain a set of credentials to authenticate the new user with. The result of this call should be a dictionary suitable for passing todjango.contrib.auth.authenticate()
. Typically, this would be a dict withusername
andpassword
keys - but this may vary if you’re using a different authentication backend.
The default configuration, using the provided UserCreationForm
, should
be enough for most users, but the customisation point is there if you need
it.
To specify your own form, set the LAZYSIGNUP_CUSTOM_USER_CREATION_FORM
setting to your settings file like so:
LAZYSIGNUP_CUSTOM_USER_CREATION_FORM = 'myproject.apps.myapp.forms.MyForm'
The view also supports template_name
and ajax_template_name
arguments,
to specify templates to render in web and ajax contexts respectively.
The converted
signal¶
Whenever a temporary user account is converted into a real user account, the
lazysignup.signals.converted
signal will be sent. If you need to do any
processing when an account is converted, you should listen for the signal, eg:
from lazysignup.signals import converted
from django.dispatch import receiver
@receiver(converted)
def my_callback(sender, **kwargs):
print "New user account: %s!" % kwargs['user'].username
The signal provides a single argument, user
, which contains the
newly-converted User object.