register user by email or mobile number in django - django

Question

i have custom user model with email as unique identifier for auth instead of username. i want register a user by email or mobile number. if user enter email address, then register user by activation link, and if user enter phone number then register by SMS OTP.
something like instagram registration:
https://www.instagram.com/accounts/emailsignup/
i found this topic but the answer is not explained well.

Answer 1

A username is required for a User object. But, you can make that username their email too, so it's not a problem (at least in django 2.x, not sure about 1.x). You didn't describe what the app you're making was for, it's purpose, etc., so before you skip to the code, read the following warnings and thought process of why I am giving you a better option.
It's a very bad idea to force the person to have the username equal to their email, because in the future you might want to add some other functionality.
For example: Maybe you'd want to make a message board so people can talk to each other. But because of bad planning from the beginning, everyone would see each other by their email. Technically, you could asign them all a bunch of random usernames they didn't make up, but that's not a good idea cause they're less likely to remember it, and they might not like it. The only good use of a name like sPaRkLe_DaNcEr12 or Poothtaste, is for making people rage quit in video games.
So if you wanted a future ability for users to talk to each other, it would be better to only show their username to other users, but ALLOW people to log in with their email or phone number if they wanted to. This way, now they can login with their (username) or (email) or (phone_number), and they only have to remember one of those. I will show you how soon.
Some downsides of this: It makes more queries to your database, which can make it slower if you have tons of users, but that's your call. Personally, I say it's worth it because it's negligible, and easier for users, and it's them you should cater to. So pay for a faster server, or no??? Ultimately, you always ought to design around having as few queries as possible, while caching certain pages that are heavy on the database so it doesn't have to do the same thing X number of times.
Let's begin:
Remember that the following is an example of what I would do for django 2.x, with a better functionality than you're asking for. If you're using 1.x, just use url() instead of path(), and any other requirements.
Assume we have an app called accounts_app.
Also assume that we put path('accounts/', include('accounts_app.urls')), inside our project level urls.py.
I'm also going to assume you know how to use templates... Now, create a urls.py inside that app:
accounts_app/urls.py:
app_name = 'accounts_app'
urlpatterns = [
...
path('signup/', views.signup, name='signup'),
]
accounts_app/models.py:
The user attribute below enables you to extend the User model, so you can have their phone_number too. In this example, I allowed that be blank in case they don't want to give it. But if they did, you would have make a separate view for it. To make this whole thing much more simple, I'm not going to include that, nor tell you how to overwrite the whole User model. I'm only going to show you how to log in with an email with the regular User model. After that, doing so with a phone number shouldn't be hard at all. A reminder on what you will need is at the very end of this post.
class ExtendedUserExample(models.Model):
user = models.OneToOneField(settings.AUTH_USER_MODEL, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
created = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
phone_number = models.IntegerField(blank=True)
settings.py.... NOTE THAT THIS IS IN THE PROJECT LEVEL FOLDER
The order of these backends matters. Always do ModelBackend first, or it will break.
AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS = [
'django.contrib.auth.backends.ModelBackend',
'accounts_app.authentication.EmailAuthBackend', # to be able to login with email, described next
]
accounts_app/authentication.py:
This is an example to be able to login by their email. If you wanted someone to login by their phone number too, the principle is the same, but in this file, you would also need to import the ExtendedUserExample model above, add that to the above settings AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS at the bottom of it, and make a new class for PhoneAuthBackend, that searches ExtendedUserExample for the phone_number. Again, to keep this more simple, I am not completely overwriting the User model, rather I only extend it, so if a user made an account and wanted to login by phone number later on, they would have to sign up with a username and email first, and once in, they could add a phone number (with this example, you will need another view for that).
So try this email example first until you get the hang of it. You also don't need to import this file anywhere else because the settings.py file takes care of it.
Here's what's happening: On your template for logging in, it will first search for the username field inside your User model, because your settings.py file has the AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS variable to check the ModelBackend first.
But let's say a user entered their username as aaa#aaa.com. Now since you didn't allow anyone to sign up with an email as their username, when aaa#aaa.com is not found as a username in the User model, your settings file now says to go check the same User object a second time, but search their input by the email field / column instead. If their input exists in that column, authenticate() logs them in by their email if the password is right.
from django.contrib.auth.models import User
class EmailAuthBackend(object):
""" Authenticate using an email address """
def authenticate(self, request, username=None, password=None):
try:
user = User.objects.get(email=username) # gets the email by the 'username' they entered
if user.check_password(password):
return user
return None
except User.DoesNotExist:
return None
def get_user(self, user_id):
try:
return User.objects.get(pk=user_id)
except User.DoesNotExist:
return None
acounts_app/views.py:
I'll assume you know how to make django forms. If not, check here for model forms.
from .forms import ExtendedUserForm
def signup(request):
form = ExtendedUserForm(request.POST or None)
if request.method == 'POST':
if request.POST['password1'] == request.POST['password2']:
potential_user = request.POST.get('username', False).lower()
try:
user = User.objects.get(username=potential_user)
return render(request, 'accounts_app/signup.html', {'error': 'Username has already been taken. Please try another'})
except User.DoesNotExist:
if form.is_valid():
new_user = User.objects.create_user(username=potential_user, email=request.POST['email'], password=request.POST['password1'])
# backend argument required cause we are making the ability to LOGIN by email.
# Remember, I only extended the User model.
auth.login(request, new_user, backend='django.contrib.auth.backends.ModelBackend')
return redirect('some_app:some_view')
else:
return render(request, 'accounts_app/signup.html', {'error': "Password's must match."})
return render(request, 'accounts_app/signup.html', {'form': form})
Now that your login by email should be working, it's not that hard to follow these principles to create the same ability for logging in by phone. If you continue with this example, you will need to make a new view to save a phone number to ExtendedUserExample.phone_number. After that, add another line at the bottom of AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS, write a new class in authentication.py, and you'd be set... So long as you have <input type="text" name="username" required> when they use your login view.