How to require login for Django Generic Views?

For Django < 1.5, you can add a decorator by wrapping the function in your urls, which allows you to wrap the generic views:

from django.contrib.auth.decorators import login_required
from django.views.generic.simple import direct_to_template
urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^foo/$', login_required(direct_to_template), {'template': 'foo_index.html'}),
    )

The function-based generic views are deprecated in Django 1.4 and were removed in Django 1.5. But the same principle applies, just wrap the view function of the class based view with the login_required decorator:

login_required(TemplateView.as_view(template_name='foo_index.html'))

If you don't want to write your own thin wrapper around the generic views in question (as Aamir suggested), you can also do something like this in your urls.py file:

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *

# Directly import whatever generic views you're using and the login_required
# decorator
from django.views.generic.simple import direct_to_template
from django.contrib.auth.decorators import login_required

# In your urlpatterns, wrap the generic view with the decorator
urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'', login_required(direct_to_template), {'template': 'index.html'}),
    # etc
)

In Django =>3.0 it gets pretty easy:

from django.contrib.auth.decorators import login_required
from django.utils.decorators import method_decorator
from django.views.generic import TemplateView

@method_decorator(login_required(login_url='/login/'), name='dispatch')
class ProtectedView(TemplateView):
    template_name = 'secret.html'

for reference: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.0/topics/class-based-views/intro/#decorating-the-class

Use the following:

from django.contrib.auth.decorators import login_required

@login_required
def your_view():
    # your code here

The following could solve this issue.

// in views.py:
class LoginAuthenAJAX(View):
    def dispatch(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
        if request.user.is_authenticated:
            jsonr = json.dumps({'authenticated': True})
        else:
            jsonr = json.dumps({'authenticated': False})
        return HttpResponse(jsonr, content_type='application/json')

// in urls.py
    path('login_auth', views.LoginAuthenAJAX.as_view(), name="user_verify"),

//in xxx.html
<script src = “{% static “xxx/script.js” %}” 
var login_auth_link = “{%  url ‘user_verify’ %}”
</script>

// in script.js
        $.get(login_auth_link, {
            'csrfmiddlewaretoken' : csrf_token,
            },
            function(ret){
                if (ret.authenticated == false) {
                    window.location.pathname="/accounts/login/"
                }
                $("#message").html(ret.result);
            }
        )

I had been struggling with finding the answer to this for a long time till I found this workaround.

In models.py do: from django.db import models

class YourLoginModel:
      fullname = models.CharField(max_length=255, default='your_name', unique=True)
      email  = models.EmailField(max_length=255, unique=True)
      username = models.CharField(max_length=255, unique=True)
      password = models.CharField(max_length=255) #using werkzeug's 
                                                  #generate_password_hash on plaintext password before committing to database model

In forms.py do:

from django import forms
from .models import YourLoginModel

class LoginForm(forms.ModelForm):
      class Meta:
            model = YourLoginModel
            fields = ('username', 'password')

In views.py login logic:

def login(request):
    #login logic here
     # init empty form
    form = LoginForm()

    if request.method == 'POST':

        try:
            # peforms a Select query in db and gets user with log in username
            user_logging_in = User.objects.get(username=request.POST['username'])

            # assign user hash to var
            hash = user_logging_in.password

            # assign form str passs word to var
            password = request.POST['password']

        # if the user does not exist
        except ObjectDoesNotExist:
            html_response = 'User does not exists'
            return HttpResponse(html_response)

        # peform password and hash check
        if check_password_hash(hash, password):
 
            #using sessions cookies to know who we're interacting with
            request.session['username'] = request.POST['username']

            #set expiry date of the session
            request.session.set_expiry(0) # 0 means when the browser is closed

            return redirect('yourapp:home')
        else:
            return HttpResponse('password was incorrect')

    html = 'Login'
    return render(request, 'login.html', {'form': form})

In app view you want to perform login_required on do

from django.views.generic import TemplateView

class yourTemplateView(TemplateView):
      template_name = 'your_template.html'
      def dispatch(self, request, *args, **kwrags):
           if not request.session.has_key('username'):
              #return HttpResponse('not logged in')
              return redirect('yourapp:login.html')
           else:
              return render(request, 'your_view.html')