Dynamic login/logout URLs in Django

Question

I have an app that serves pages like this /stage/stagename. stagename is variable. The URL mappers just look for a [0-9A-Za-z]+ to fill that slot.

Now, because of my setup, My app will be rooted at /stage/stagename. I cannot change this (without massive changes to my setup which is too tedious right now and a last option).

I need to use django.contrib.auth. The login and logout URLs can't be in my settings file since they will change depend on where my app is rooted (For one it might be /stage/foo/login and for the other, it might might /stage/bar/login).

How can I make the backend use such dynamic URLs?

I also have the issue that I need to pass the stagename parameter to the template which generates my URL. How can I do that?

Answer 1

If you can get redirect_to into the context for your login template, then there is a mechanism you can use to choose vary the redirect URL.

In your login template, add an extra hidden input to the form

<input type="hidden" name="next" value="{% url redirect_to %}">

Now in your urls.py file, you can specify what input to use for the redirect:

url(r'^login/$',
    auth_views.login,
    {'template_name': 'registration/login.html',
     'redirect_field_name': 'next'},
    name='auth_login'),

If you do this, then you'll be redirected to different places depending on the value of redirect_to.

You might be able to get redirect_to into your context by having more than one named login url:

url(r'^login/$',
    auth_views.login,
    {'template_name': 'registration/login.html',
     'redirect_field_name': 'next',
     'extra_context': {'redirect_to': 'foo_url'}
    },
    name='foo_login'),

url(r'^login/$',
    auth_views.login,
    {'template_name': 'registration/login.html',
     'redirect_field_name': 'next',
     'extra_context': {'redirect_to': 'bar_url'}
    },
    name='bar_login'),

Or if you don't want to do that sort of thing, you could use something in the session instead:

<input type="hidden" name="next" value="{% url session.redirect_to %}">

Hope this helps, and apologies if there are typos in the code! The documentation for the auth login view is a bit hard to link to link. Go to that link and scroll up a bit!

Answer 2

/stage/foo/login and for the other, it might might /stage/bar/login).

url( r'^stage/(?P<name>[^/]+)/login/$', some_view_function )

Might be what you're looking for.

However, you seem to have bigger problems than this. "massive changes to my setup which is too tedious" indicates more serious and fundamental problems.