Question

From the tastypie tutorial:

from django.contrib.auth.models import User
from django.db import models
from tastypie.models import create_api_key

models.signals.post_save.connect(create_api_key, sender=User)

The tutorial says:

“Tastypie includes a signal function you can use to auto-create ApiKey objects.”

I don’t know where to put this code, help please.

Answer 1

You can put this code in models.py file of the relevant app. Alternatively, you can also place it in signals.py under your app directory — remember to also import signals in your app’s __init__.py file.

What this code does here is that by using signals, every time a User is created, an HMAC API key will be automatically created for this user [source]:

class ApiKey(models.Model):
    user = models.OneToOneField(User, related_name='api_key')
    key = models.CharField(max_length=256, blank=True, default='')
    created = models.DateTimeField(default=datetime.datetime.now)

    def __unicode__(self):
        return u"%s for %s" % (self.key, self.user)

    def save(self, *args, **kwargs):
        if not self.key:
            self.key = self.generate_key()

        return super(ApiKey, self).save(*args, **kwargs)

    def generate_key(self):
        # Get a random UUID.
        new_uuid = uuid.uuid4()
        # Hmac that beast.
        return hmac.new(str(new_uuid), digestmod=sha1).hexdigest()


def create_api_key(sender, **kwargs):
    """
    A signal for hooking up automatic ``ApiKey`` creation.
    """
    if kwargs.get('created') is True:
        ApiKey.objects.create(user=kwargs.get('instance'))