Django Email as Username

User authentication with email addresses instead of usernames.

Author: Tom Christie, @_tomchristie.

See also: django-email-login, django-email-usernames.

Overview

Allows you to treat users as having only email addresses, instead of usernames.

1. Provides an email auth backend and helper functions for creating users.
2. Patches the Django admin to handle email based user authentication.
3. Overides the createsuperuser command to create users with email only.
4. Treats email authentication as case-insensitive.

Requirements

Known to work with Django 1.3, 1.4 (Note: 1.4 support not yet pushed to PyPI)

Installation

Install from PyPI:

pip install django-email-as-username

Add 'emailusernames' to INSTALLED_APPS.

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...
    'emailusernames',
)

Set EmailAuthBackend as your authentication backend:

AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS = (
    'emailusernames.backends.EmailAuthBackend',
)

Usage

Creating users

You should create users using the create_user and create_superuser functions.

from emailusernames.utils import create_user, create_superuser

create_user('[email protected]', 'password')
create_superuser('[email protected]', 'password')

Retrieving users

You can retrieve users, using case-insensitive email matching, with the get_user function. Similarly you can use user_exists to test if a given user exists.

from emailusernames.utils import get_user, user_exists

user = get_user('[email protected]')
...

if user_exists('[email protected]'):
    ...

Updating users

You can update a user's email and save the instance, without having to also modify the username.

user.email = '[email protected]'
user.save()

Note that the user.username attribute will always return the email address, but behind the scenes it will be stored as a hashed version of the user's email.

Authenticating users

You should use email and password keyword args in calls to authenticate, rather than the usual username and password.

from django.contrib.auth import authenticate

user = authenticate(email='[email protected]', password='password')
if user:
    ...
else:
    ...

User Forms

emailusernames provides the following forms that you can use for authenticating, creating and updating users:

• emailusernames.forms.EmailAuthenticationForm
• emailusernames.forms.EmailAdminAuthenticationForm
• emailusernames.forms.EmailUserCreationForm
• emailusernames.forms.EmailUserChangeForm

Using Django's built-in login view

If you're using django.contrib.auth.views.login in your urlconf, you'll want to make sure you pass through EmailAuthenticationForm as an argument to the view.

from emailusernames.forms import EmailAuthenticationForm

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    ...
    url(r'^auth/login$', 'django.contrib.auth.views.login',
        {'authentication_form': EmailAuthenticationForm}, name='login'),
    ...
)

Migrating existing projects

emailusernames includes a function you can use to easily migrate existing projects.

The migration will refuse to run if there are any users that it cannot migrate either because they do not have an email set, or because there exists a duplicate email for more than one user.

There are two ways you might choose to run this migration.

Run the update manually

Using manage.py shell:

bash: python ./manage.py shell
>>> from emailusernames.utils import migrate_usernames
>>> migrate_usernames()
Successfully migrated usernames for all 12 users

Run as a data migration

Using south, and assuming you have an app named accounts, this might look something like:

bash: python ./manage.py datamigration accounts email_usernames
Created 0002_email_usernames.py.

Now edit 0002_email_usernames.py:

from emailusernames.utils import migrate_usernames

def forwards(self, orm):
    "Write your forwards methods here."
    migrate_usernames()

And finally apply the migration:

python ./manage.py migrate accounts

Changelog

Dev

• Fix support for Django 1.4

1.4.1

• Fix bug with displaying usernames correctly if migration fails

1.4.0

• Easier migrations, using migrate_usernames()

1.3.1

• Authentication backend now sets User.backend.

1.3.0

• Use hashed username lookups for performance.
• Use Django's email regex validator, rather than providing our own version.
• Tweaks to admin.
• Tweaks to documentation and notes on upgrading.

1.2.0

• Fix import bug in createsuperuser managment command.

1.1.0

• Fix bug in EmailAuthenticationForm

1.0.0

• Initial release

License

Copyright © 2012, DabApps.

All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.