Access Mixins

These mixins all control a user’s access to a given view. Since they all extend the AccessMixin, the implement a common API that includes the following class attributes:

login_url = settings.LOGIN_URL
redirect_field_name = REDIRECT_FIELD_NAME
raise_exception = False

The raise_exception attribute will cause the view to raise a PermissionDenied exception if it is set to True, otherwise the view will redirect to the login view provided.

LoginRequiredMixin

This mixin is rather simple and is generally the first inherited class in any of our views. If we don’t have an authenticated user there’s no need to go any further. If you’ve used Django before you are probably familiar with the login_required decorator. All we are doing here is requiring a user to be authenticated to be able to get to this view.

While this doesn’t look like much, it frees us up from having to manually overload the dispatch method on every single view that requires a user to be authenticated. If that’s all that is needed on this view, we just saved 3 lines of code. Example usage below.

Note

As of version 1.0, the LoginRequiredMixin has been rewritten to behave like the rest of the access mixins. It now accepts login_url, redirect_field_name and raise_exception.

from django.views.generic import TemplateView

from braces.views import LoginRequiredMixin


class SomeSecretView(LoginRequiredMixin, TemplateView):
    template_name = "path/to/template.html"

    #optional
    login_url = "/signup/"
    redirect_field_name = "hollaback"
    raise_exception = True

    def get(self, request):
        return self.render_to_response({})

PermissionRequiredMixin

This mixin was originally written, I believe, by Daniel Sokolowski (code here), but we have updated it to eliminate an unneeded render if the permissions check fails.

Rather than overloading the dispatch method manually on every view that needs to check for the existence of a permission, we inherit this class and set the permission_required class attribute on our view. If you don’t specify permission_required on your view, an ImproperlyConfigured exception is raised reminding you that you haven’t set it.

The one limitation of this mixin is that it can only accept a single permission. If you need multiple permissions use MultiplePermissionsRequiredMixin.

In our normal use case for this mixin, LoginRequiredMixin comes first, then the PermissionRequiredMixin. If we don’t have an authenticated user, there is no sense in checking for any permissions.

Note

If you are using Django’s built in auth system, superusers automatically have all permissions in your system.

from braces.views import LoginRequiredMixin, PermissionRequiredMixin


class SomeProtectedView(LoginRequiredMixin, PermissionRequiredMixin, TemplateView):
    permission_required = "auth.change_user"
    template_name = "path/to/template.html"

MultiplePermissionsRequiredMixin

The multiple permissions required view mixin is a more powerful version of the PermissionRequiredMixin. This view mixin can handle multiple permissions by setting the mandatory permissions attribute as a dict with the keys any and/or all to a list/tuple of permissions. The all key requires the request.user to have all of the specified permissions. The any key requires the request.user to have at least ONE of the specified permissions. If you only need to check a single permission, the PermissionRequiredMixin is all you need.

Note

If you are using Django’s built in auth system, superusers automatically have all permissions in your system.

from braces.views import LoginRequiredMixin, MultiplePermissionsRequiredMixin


class SomeProtectedView(LoginRequiredMixin,
                        MultiplePermissionsRequiredMixin,
                        TemplateView):

    #required
    permissions = {
        "all": ("blog.add_post", "blog.change_post"),
        "any": ("blog.delete_post", "user.change_user")
    }

GroupRequiredMixin

New in version 1.2.

The group required view mixin ensures that the requesting user is in the group or groups specified. This view mixin can handle multiple groups by setting the mandatory group_required attribute as a list or tuple.

Note

The mixin assumes you’re using Django’s default Group model and that your user model provides groups as a ManyToMany relationship. If this is not the case, you’ll need to override check_membership in the mixin to handle your custom set up.

Standard Django Usage

from braces.views import GroupRequiredMixin


class SomeProtectedView(GroupRequiredMixin, TemplateView):

    #required
    group_required = u'editors'

Custom Group Usage

from braces.views import GroupRequiredMixin


class SomeProtectedView(GroupRequiredMixin, TemplateView):

    #required
    group_required = u'editors'

    def check_membership(self, group):
        ...
        # Check some other system for group membership
        if user_in_group:
            return True
        else:
            return False

SuperuserRequiredMixin

Another permission-based mixin. This is specifically for requiring a user to be a superuser. Comes in handy for tools that only privileged users should have access to.

from braces.views import LoginRequiredMixin, SuperuserRequiredMixin


class SomeSuperuserView(LoginRequiredMixin, SuperuserRequiredMixin, TemplateView):
    template_name = "path/to/template.html"

StaffuserRequiredMixin

Similar to SuperuserRequiredMixin, this mixin allows you to require a user with is_staff set to True.

from braces.views import LoginRequiredMixin, StaffuserRequiredMixin


class SomeStaffuserView(LoginRequiredMixin, StaffuserRequiredMixin, TemplateView):
    template_name = "path/to/template.html"