Django brings a built-in user authentication system, it includes an User model which has the most common attributes. But in most applications you may need to store additional attributes to users. Django has a way to do this too.

Extending using foreign key

Basically you create your UserProfile model with a OneToOneField to User:

class UserProfile(models.Model):
    user = models.OneToOneField('auth.User')
    bio = models.TextField()
    # ...

and define in on settings.py

AUTH_PROFILE_MODULE = 'accounts.UserProfile'     # app name (dot) model name

From now on your User objects will have a get_profile() method.

I personally can’t see a reason to use this setting (and I hate “getters” methods), you just need to do this:

class UserProfile(models.Model):
    user = models.OneToOneField('auth.User', related_name='profile')
    bio = models.TextField()
    # ...

See the related_name='profile' parameter, now you don’t need the get_profile() method anymore, just use user_instance.profile.

But there is a small problem here, if the user instance don’t have a profile related to it you will receive an ObjectDoesNotExist exception. This happens with get_profile() too. And it’s not good to handle the exception every time you access the profile. The simplest way to solve this is connect to django.db.models.signals.post_save on the User model and create your UserProfile instance related to it

from django.db.models import signals
from accounts.models import UserProfile

def create_user_profile(sender, instance, created, **kwargs):
    if created:
        UserProfile.objects.create(user=instance)

signals.post_save.connect(create_user_profile, sender=User)

Why subclassing User is a bad idea

There are a few reasons I prefer to create user profiles as another model instead of just subclassing the default User. If you think for a while, an user has a lot to do in your site, and there are at a few default steps:

  • first she needs to register, confirm by email, and so on
  • login and logout, change and reset password
  • admins may need to manage groups and permissions, to restrict user actions, offer features to specific groups
  • manage profile, with personal information

Django doesn’t handle the first topic, there is a great app to handle registration.

The second and third topics can be done with django.contrib.auth app, this is exactly it’s purpose.

And then you have the forth topic, which is profiles. As you can see, it can be done as a separate app. A user has a profile. So makes sense to have a profile attribute in the User object.

If you split features in apps like this it’s easier to reuse too, that’s the idea of django apps after all! The django-registration is an example. And as you can imagine, there are apps to manage profiles too.

Editing User profile in admin

If you’re using admin you may want to edit the UserProfile fields in the same page as the User fields, and it’s possible using admin inlines. Here is how you admin configuration will look like:

from django.contrib import admin
from django.contrib.auth.admin import UserAdmin as DjangoUserAdmin
from django.contrib.auth.models import User

from accounts.models import UserProfile

class UserProfileInline(admin.TabularInline):
    model = UserProfile

class UserAdmin(DjangoUserAdmin):
    inlines = (UserProfileInline,)

admin.site.unregister(User)
admin.site.register(User, UserAdmin)

Conclusion

As you can see, it quite easy to manage user profiles in django. Although there is a way to hook you profile model in settings.py, you can do it with a simple foreign key. And as usual, there are a few reusable apps around to handle the generic stuff.