Django: Populate user ID when saving a model

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I have a model with a created_by field that is linked to the standard Django User model. I need to automatically populate this with the ID of the current User when the model is saved. I can't do this at the Admin layer, as most parts of the site will not use the built-in Admin. Can anyone advise on how I should go about this?

django-authentication django-models django
13 Answers

If you want something that will work both in the admin and elsewhere, you should use a custom modelform. The basic idea is to override the __init__ method to take an extra parameter - request - and store it as an attribute of the form, then also override the save method to set the user id before saving to the database.

class MyModelForm(forms.ModelForm):

   def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
       self.request = kwargs.pop('request', None)
       return super(MyModelForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)


   def save(self, *args, **kwargs):
       kwargs['commit']=False
       obj = super(MyModelForm, self).save(*args, **kwargs)
       if self.request:
           obj.user = self.request.user
       obj.save()
       return obj
user_1043490

what is the problem with using something like: 

class MyModelForm(forms.ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = MyModel
        exclude = ['created_by']

    def save(self, user):
        obj = super().save(commit = False)
        obj.created_by = user
        obj.save()
        return obj

Now call it like myform.save(request.user) in the views.

here is ModelForm's save function, which has only a commit parameter.

user_23516960

From the Django documentation Models and request.user:

" To track the user that created an object using a CreateView, you can use a custom ModelForm. In the view, ensure that you don’t include [the user field] in the list of fields to edit, and override form_valid() to add the user:

from django.contrib.auth.mixins import LoginRequiredMixin
from django.views.generic.edit import CreateView
from myapp.models import Author

class AuthorCreate(LoginRequiredMixin, CreateView):
    model = Author
    fields = ['name']

    def form_valid(self, form):
        form.instance.created_by = self.request.user
        return super().form_valid(form)
user_50580260
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