Private by Default

Part of the Users and Accounts section of Coddy's Django journey. Lesson 7 of 16.

A notes app is private: almost nothing should be open to visitors. With @login_required on every view, the day you forget it on a new view, that page is public.

Middleware is code every request passes through on its way to a view; MIDDLEWARE in settings.py lists it in order. LoginRequiredMiddleware sends every visitor who is not signed in to LOGIN_URL, whatever page they asked for. It reads request.user, so it goes after AuthenticationMiddleware, which sets it.

Then you mark the pages that stay public. A members' club keeps its opening hours open to anyone:

from django.contrib.auth.decorators import login_not_required


@login_not_required
def opening_hours(request):
    return render(request, "club/hours.html")

Django's login page is marked already. Every other view is now protected, so the @login_required lines can go.

Challenge

Easy

Turn on "django.contrib.auth.middleware.LoginRequiredMiddleware" in MIDDLEWARE, in the right place.
Remove the three @login_required lines.
A visitor can still open /signup/ and make an account.

Press Run: / opens on the login page. Then follow the Sign up link.

Try it yourself

from pathlib import Path

BASE_DIR = Path(__file__).resolve().parent.parent

SECRET_KEY = "django-insecure-change-me"
DEBUG = True
ALLOWED_HOSTS = []

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    "django.contrib.admin",
    "django.contrib.auth",
    "django.contrib.contenttypes",
    "django.contrib.sessions",
    "django.contrib.messages",
    "django.contrib.staticfiles",
    "notes",
]

MIDDLEWARE = [
    "django.middleware.security.SecurityMiddleware",
    "django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware",
    "django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware",
    "django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware",
    "django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware",
    "django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware",
    "django.middleware.clickjacking.XFrameOptionsMiddleware",
]

ROOT_URLCONF = "mysite.urls"

TEMPLATES = [
    {
        "BACKEND": "django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates",
        "DIRS": [],
        "APP_DIRS": True,
        "OPTIONS": {
            "context_processors": [
                "django.template.context_processors.request",
                "django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth",
                "django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages",
            ],
        },
    },
]

DATABASES = {
    "default": {
        "ENGINE": "django.db.backends.sqlite3",
        "NAME": BASE_DIR / "db.sqlite3",
    }
}

AUTH_PASSWORD_VALIDATORS = [
    {"NAME": "django.contrib.auth.password_validation.UserAttributeSimilarityValidator"},
    {"NAME": "django.contrib.auth.password_validation.MinimumLengthValidator"},
    {"NAME": "django.contrib.auth.password_validation.CommonPasswordValidator"},
    {"NAME": "django.contrib.auth.password_validation.NumericPasswordValidator"},
]

LANGUAGE_CODE = "en-us"
TIME_ZONE = "UTC"
USE_I18N = True
USE_TZ = True

STATIC_URL = "static/"

LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL = "/"
LOGOUT_REDIRECT_URL = "/"