Django basic authentication

The Django framework makes it very easy to implement in the basic authentication, let me show you one quick and simple example of it.

let’s start by making the project

django-admin startproject simple_authentication_project 

Create “myapp” inside of it

python manage.py startapp myapp

We will make the three views inside of myapp .i.e. login_page , home_page, logout_page

Login Page

# login page
def login_page(request):
    if request.method == "POST":
        user = authenticate(
            username=request.POST["username"], password=request.POST["password"]
        )
        if user:
            login(request, user)
            return redirect(home_page)
        else:
            return render(request, "login.html", {"error": "Invalid login"})
    else:
        return render(request, "login.html", {"error": ""})

In the login view all we have to do is to take the username and password from the simple html form and then pass to the function “authenticate()” with the request object. If the user exists authenticate function will return the user object and if not it will return None. If we get a user object all we have to do is to pass that user object to the “login()” function which will log the user.

Home Page

# home page
@login_required(login_url="/login")
def home_page(request):
    return render(request, "home.html", {})

We have given the login_required decorator to the home page view so that only the login user is able to see the page.If the user is not logged in,then it will redirect him to the login page.

Logout Page

# logout page
@login_required(login_url="/login")
def logout_page(request):
    logout(request)
    return render(request, "logout.html", {})

Logout view is very simple. All we have to do is to pass the request object to it and it will log out the logged in user.

And that’s it..easy-peasy, isn't it? But wait what about “login.html”, “logout.html”, and “home.html”.
Don’t worry there is nothing special about them to explain. I have put the link to github below. Only thing you have to remember is to put the line csrf_token inside the form whenever you are making the “POST” request.

Let's test our simple application,

start by creating user, for the simplicity we will work with superuser for now,

First migrate

python manage.py migrate

create super user

python manage.py createsuperuser

finally runserver

python manage.py runserver

Now our server is running head to the browser and go the address 'localhost:8000'.

Login page

Home Page

Logout Page

Link to github Repository

https://github.com/binary-ibex/simple_authentication_django.git