The default backend¶
A default registration backend is bundled with
django-registration, as the class
registration.backends.default.DefaultBackend
, and implements a
simple two-step workflow in which a new user first registers, then
confirms and activates the new account by following a link sent to the
email address supplied during registration.
Default behavior and configuration¶
This backend makes use of the following settings:
ACCOUNT_ACTIVATION_DAYS
- This is the number of days users will have to activate their accounts after registering. Failing to activate during that period will leave the account inactive (and possibly subject to deletion). This setting is required, and must be an integer.
REGISTRATION_OPEN
- A boolean (either
True
orFalse
) indicating whether registration of new accounts is currently permitted. This setting is optional, and a default ofTrue
will be assumed if it is not supplied.
By default, this backend uses
registration.forms.RegistrationForm
as its form class for
user registration; this can be overridden by passing the keyword
argument form_class
to the register()
view.
Upon successful registration – not activation – the default redirect
is to the URL pattern named registration_complete
; this can be
overridden by passing the keyword argument success_url
to the
register()
view.
Upon successful activation, the default redirect is to the URL pattern
named registration_activation_complete
; this can be overridden by
passing the keyword argument success_url
to the
activate()
view.
How account data is stored for activation¶
During registration, a new instance of
django.contrib.auth.models.User
is created to represent the new
account, with the is_active
field set to False
. An email is
then sent to the email address of the account, containing a link the
user must click to activate the account; at that point the
is_active
field is set to True
, and the user may log in
normally.
Activation is handled by generating and storing an activation key in the database, using the following model:
-
class
registration.models.
RegistrationProfile
¶ A simple representation of the information needed to activate a new user account. This is not a user profile; it simply provides a place to temporarily store the activation key and determine whether a given account has been activated.
Has the following fields:
-
user
¶ A
ForeignKey
todjango.contrib.auth.models.User
, representing the user account for which activation information is being stored.
-
activation_key
¶ A 40-character
CharField
, storing the activation key for the account. Initially, the activation key is the hexdigest of a SHA1 hash; after activation, this is reset toACTIVATED
.
Additionally, one class attribute exists:
-
ACTIVATED
¶ A constant string used as the value of
activation_key
for accounts which have been activated.
And the following methods:
-
activation_key_expired
()¶ Determines whether this account’s activation key has expired, and returns a boolean (
True
if expired,False
otherwise). Uses the following algorithm:- If
activation_key
isACTIVATED
, the account has already been activated and so the key is considered to have expired. - Otherwise, the date of registration (obtained from the
date_joined
field ofuser
) is compared to the current date; if the span between them is greater than the value of the settingACCOUNT_ACTIVATION_DAYS
, the key is considered to have expired.
Return type: bool - If
-
send_activation_email
(site)¶ Sends an activation email to the address of the account.
The activation email will make use of two templates:
registration/activation_email_subject.txt
andregistration/activation_email.txt
, which are used for the subject of the email and the body of the email, respectively. Each will receive the following context:activation_key
- The value of
activation_key
. expiration_days
- The number of days the user has to activate, taken from the
setting
ACCOUNT_ACTIVATION_DAYS
. site
- An object representing the site on which the account was
registered; depending on whether
django.contrib.sites
is installed, this may be an instance of eitherdjango.contrib.sites.models.Site
(if the sites application is installed) ordjango.contrib.sites.models.RequestSite
(if not). Consult the documentation for the Django sites framework for details regarding these objects’ interfaces.
Because email subjects must be a single line of text, the rendered output of
registration/activation_email_subject.txt
will be forcibly condensed to a single line.Parameters: site ( django.contrib.sites.models.Site
ordjango.contrib.sites.models.RequestSite
) – An object representing the site on which account was registered.Return type: None
-
Additionally, RegistrationProfile
has a custom manager
(accessed as RegistrationProfile.objects
):
-
class
registration.models.
RegistrationManager
¶ This manager provides several convenience methods for creating and working with instances of
RegistrationProfile
:-
activate_user
(activation_key)¶ Validates
activation_key
and, if valid, activates the associated account by setting itsis_active
field toTrue
. To prevent re-activation of accounts, theactivation_key
of theRegistrationProfile
for the account will be set toRegistrationProfile.ACTIVATED
after successful activation.Returns the
User
instance representing the account if activation is successful,False
otherwise.Parameters: activation_key (string, a 40-character SHA1 hexdigest) – The activation key to use for the activation. Return type: User
or bool
-
delete_expired_users
()¶ Removes expired instances of
RegistrationProfile
, and their associated user accounts, from the database. This is useful as a periodic maintenance task to clean out accounts which registered but never activated.Accounts to be deleted are identified by searching for instances of
RegistrationProfile
with expired activation keys and with associated user accounts which are inactive (have theiris_active
field set toFalse
). To disable a user account without having it deleted, simply delete its associatedRegistrationProfile
; anyUser
which does not have an associatedRegistrationProfile
will not be deleted.A custom management command is provided which will execute this method, suitable for use in cron jobs or other scheduled maintenance tasks:
manage.py cleanupregistration
.Return type: None
-
create_inactive_user
(username, email, password, site[, send_email])¶ Creates a new, inactive user account and an associated instance of
RegistrationProfile
, sends the activation email and returns the newUser
object representing the account.Parameters: - username (string) – The username to use for the new account.
- email (string) – The email address to use for the new account.
- password (string) – The password to use for the new account.
- site (
django.contrib.sites.models.Site
ordjango.contrib.sites.models.RequestSite
) – An object representing the site on which the account is being registered. - send_email (bool) – If
True
, the activation email will be sent to the account (by callingRegistrationProfile.send_activation_email()
). IfFalse
, no email will be sent (but the account will still be inactive)
Return type: User
-
create_profile
(user)¶ Creates and returns a
RegistrationProfile
instance for the account represented byuser
.The
RegistrationProfile
created by this method will have itsactivation_key
set to a SHA1 hash generated from a combination of the account’s username and a random salt.Parameters: user ( User
) – The user account; an instance ofdjango.contrib.auth.models.User
.Return type: RegistrationProfile
-