The default backend

A default registration backend` is bundled with django-registration, as the module registration.backends.default, 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

To make use of this backend, simply include the URLConf registration.backends.default.urls at whatever location you choose in your URL hierarchy.

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 or False) indicating whether registration of new accounts is currently permitted. This setting is optional, and a default of True 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.

Two views are provided: registration.backends.default.views.RegistrationView and registration.backends.default.views.ActivationView. These views subclass django-registration’s base RegistrationView and ActivationView, respectively, and implement the two-step registration/activation process.

Upon successful registration – not activation – the default redirect is to the URL pattern named registration_complete; this can be overridden in subclasses by changing success_url or implementing get_success_url()

Upon successful activation, the default redirect is to the URL pattern named registration_activation_complete; this can be overridden in subclasses by implementing get_success_url().

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 to django.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 to ACTIVATED.

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:

1. If activation_key is ACTIVATED, the account has already been activated and so the key is considered to have expired.
2. Otherwise, the date of registration (obtained from the date_joined field of user) is compared to the current date; if the span between them is greater than the value of the setting ACCOUNT_ACTIVATION_DAYS, the key is considered to have expired.

Return type:bool

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 and registration/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 either django.contrib.sites.models.Site (if the sites application is installed) or django.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 or django.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 its is_active field to True. To prevent re-activation of accounts, the activation_key of the RegistrationProfile for the account will be set to RegistrationProfile.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 their is_active field set to False). To disable a user account without having it deleted, simply delete its associated RegistrationProfile; any User which does not have an associated RegistrationProfile 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 new User 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 or django.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 calling RegistrationProfile.send_activation_email()). If False, 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 by user.

The RegistrationProfile created by this method will have its activation_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 of django.contrib.auth.models.User. Return type:RegistrationProfile