Quick start guide¶
First you’ll need to have Django and django-registration installed; for details on that, see the installation guide.
The next steps will depend on which registration workflow you’d like to use. There two workflows built in to django-registration:
- The two-step activation workflow, which implements a two-step process: a user signs up, then is emailed an activation link and must click it to activate the account.
- The one-step workflow, in which a user signs up and their account is immediately active and logged in.
The guide below covers use of these two workflows. Regardless of which
one you choose to use, you should add “django_registration” to your
INSTALLED_APPS
setting.
Important
Django’s authentication system must be installed
Before proceeding with either of the recommended built-in
workflows, you’ll need to ensure django.contrib.auth has been
installed (by adding it to
INSTALLED_APPS
and running manage.py
migrate to install needed database tables). Also, if you’re making
use of a custom user model,
you’ll probably want to pause and read the custom user
compatibility guide before using
django-registration.
Note
Additional steps for account security
While django-registration does what it can to secure the user signup process, its scope is deliberately limited; please read the security documentation for recommendations on steps to secure user accounts beyond what django-registration alone can do.
Configuring the two-step activation workflow¶
The configuration process for using the two-step activation workflow is straightforward: you’ll need to specify a couple of settings, connect some URLs and create a few templates.
Required settings¶
Begin by adding the following setting to your Django settings file:
ACCOUNT_ACTIVATION_DAYS
- This is the number of days users will have to activate their accounts after registering. If a user does not activate within that period, the account will remain permanently inactive unless a site administrator manually activates it.
For example, you might have something like the following in your Django settings:
ACCOUNT_ACTIVATION_DAYS = 7 # One-week activation window
Setting up URLs¶
Each bundled registration workflow in django-registration includes a Django URLconf which sets up URL patterns for the views in django-registration. The URLconf for the two-step activation workflow can be found at django_registration.backends.activation.urls, and so can be included in your project’s root URL configuration. For example, to place the URLs under the prefix /accounts/, you could add the following to your project’s root URLconf:
from django.conf.urls import include, url
urlpatterns = [
# Other URL patterns ...
url(r'^accounts/', include('django_registration.backends.activation.urls')),
url(r'^accounts/', include('django.contrib.auth.urls')),
# More URL patterns ...
]
Users would then be able to register by visiting the URL /accounts/register/, log in (once activated) at /accounts/login/, etc.
The sample URL configuration above also sets up the built-in auth views included in Django (login, logout, password reset, etc.) via the django.contrib.auth.urls URLconf.
The following URL names are defined by this URLconf:
- django_registration_register is the account-registration view.
- django_registration_complete is the post-registration success message.
- django_registration_activate is the account-activation view.
- django_registration_activation_complete is the post-activation success message.
- django_registration_disallowed is a message indicating registration is not currently permitted.
Required templates¶
You will also need to create several templates required by
django-registration, and possibly additional templates required by
views in django.contrib.auth. The templates required by
django-registration are as follows; note that, with the exception of
the templates used for account activation emails, all of these are
rendered using a RequestContext
and so will
also receive any additional variables provided by context processors.
django_registration/registration_form.html¶
Used to show the form users will fill out to register. By default, has the following context:
- form
- The registration form. This will likely be a subclass of
RegistrationForm
; consult Django’s forms documentation for information on how to display this in a template.
django_registration/registration_complete.html¶
Used after successful completion of the registration form. This template has no context variables of its own, and should inform the user that an email containing account-activation information has been sent.
django_registration/activation_failed.html¶
Used if account activation fails. Has the following context:
- activation_error
- A
dict
containing the information supplied to theActivationError
which occurred during activation. See the documentation for that exception for a description of the keys, and the documentation forActivationView
for the specific values used in different failure situations.
django_registration/activation_complete.html¶
Used after successful account activation. This template has no context variables of its own, and should inform the user that their account is now active.
django_registration/activation_email_subject.txt¶
Used to generate the subject line of the activation email. Because the subject line of an email must be a single line of text, any output from this template will be forcibly condensed to a single line before being used. This template has the following context:
- activation_key
- The activation key for the new account.
- expiration_days
- The number of days remaining during which the account may be activated.
- request
- The
HttpRequest
object representing the request in which the user registered. - scheme
- The protocol scheme used during registration; will be either ‘http’ or ‘https’.
- site
- An object representing the site on which the user registered;
depending on whether django.contrib.sites is installed, this may
be an instance of either
django.contrib.sites.models.Site
(if the sites application is installed) ordjango.contrib.sites.requests.RequestSite
(if not). Consult the documentation for the Django sites framework for details regarding these objects’ interfaces. - user
- The newly-created user object.
django_registration/activation_email_body.txt¶
Used to generate the body of the activation email. Should display a link the user can click to activate the account. This template has the following context:
- activation_key
- The activation key for the new account.
- expiration_days
- The number of days remaining during which the account may be activated.
- request
- The
HttpRequest
object representing the request in which the user registered. - scheme
- The protocol scheme used during registration; will be either ‘http’ or ‘https’.
- site
- An object representing the site on which the user registered;
depending on whether django.contrib.sites is installed, this may
be an instance of either
django.contrib.sites.models.Site
(if the sites application is installed) ordjango.contrib.sites.requests.RequestSite
(if not). Consult the documentation for the Django sites framework for details regarding these objects. - user
- The newly-created user object.
Note that the templates used to generate the account activation email use the extension .txt, not .html. Due to widespread antipathy toward and interoperability problems with HTML email, django-registration produces plain-text email, and so these templates should output plain text rather than HTML.
To make use of the views from django.contrib.auth (which are set up for you by the default URLconf mentioned above), you will also need to create the templates required by those views. Consult the documentation for Django’s authentication system for details regarding these templates.
Configuring the one-step workflow¶
Also included is a one-step registration workflow, where a user signs up and their account is immediately active and logged in.
You will need to configure URLs to use the one-step workflow; the
easiest way is to include()
the URLconf
django_registration.backends.one_step.urls in your root URLconf. For
example, to place the URLs under the prefix /accounts/ in your URL
structure:
from django.conf.urls import include, url
urlpatterns = [
# Other URL patterns ...
url(r'^accounts/', include('django_registration.backends.one_step.urls')),
url(r'^accounts/', include('django.contrib.auth.urls')),
# More URL patterns ...
]
Users could then register accounts by visiting the URL /accounts/register/.
This URLconf will also configure the appropriate URLs for the rest of the built-in django.contrib.auth views (log in, log out, password reset, etc.).
Finally, you will need to create one template: registration/registration_form.html. See the documentation above for details of this template’s context.