Question

I have an app with 2 user levels; Superuser, and Staff. Superuser will login to this app and create a new user and assign the user either Superuser or Staff permissions, but they are not logging in through the default Django admin, they will be logging into a custom admin. How do I display the permission checkboxes in my form and how do I save them for that new user being created? Is it merely just a normal checkbox or is there something I need to override to be able to accomplish this?

Here is my CreateUserForm as it is now.

class CreateUserForm(forms.Form):
    username = forms.EmailField(max_length=50)
    email = forms.EmailField()
    first_name = forms.CharField(max_length=150)
    last_name = forms.CharField(max_length=150)
    password1 = forms.CharField(max_length=30, widget=forms.PasswordInput(render_value=False), label='Password')
    password2 = forms.CharField(max_length=30, widget=forms.PasswordInput(render_value=False), label='Password Confirmation')
    address_1 = forms.CharField(max_length=50)
    address_2 = forms.CharField(max_length=50)
    city = forms.CharField(max_length=50)
    province = forms.CharField(max_length=2)
    country = forms.CharField(max_length=50)
    postal_code = forms.CharField(max_length=10)
    work_phone = forms.CharField(max_length=20)
    mobile_phone = forms.CharField(max_length=20)
    fax = forms.CharField(max_length=20)
    url = forms.CharField()
    comments = forms.CharField(widget=forms.Textarea)

    def clean_username(self):
        try:
            User.objects.get(username=self.cleaned_data['username'])
        except User.DoesNotExist:
            return self.cleaned_data['username']
        raise forms.ValidationError("Sorry, this username has already been taken. Please choose another.")

    def clean_email(self):
        try:
            User.objects.get(email=self.cleaned_data['email'])
        except User.DoesNotExist:
            return self.cleaned_data['email']
        raise forms.ValidationError("Sorry, this email has already been taken. Please choose another.")

    def clean(self):
        if 'password1' in self.cleaned_data and 'password2' in self.cleaned_data:
            if self.cleaned_data['password1'] != self.cleaned_data['password2']:
                raise forms.ValidationError("You must type the same password each time.")
            if ' ' in self.cleaned_data['username']:
                raise forms.ValidationError("username must not contain spaces")
        return self.cleaned_data

    def save(self):
        new_user = User.objects.create_user(
            username = self.cleaned_data['username'],
            email = self.cleaned_data['email']
        )
        new_user.first_name = self.cleaned_data['first_name']
        new_user.last_name = self.cleaned_data['last_name']
        new_user.set_password(self.cleaned_data['password'])
        new_user.is_active = True
        new_user.save()

    new_profile = UserProfile(
        # TODO:
    )

Thanks

Answer 1

If you mean the permission checkboxes for is_staff and is_superuser, then you’re probably best off using a ModelForm w/ the User model. This will automatically take care of everything for you.

class UserForm(forms.ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = User
        exclude = ('last_login', 'date_joined')

EDIT per OP update: You can just add 2 forms.BooleanField() fields to your form for is_superadmin and is_staff (or name them differently), and much like you’re already doing in the save method you can do new_user.is_staff = self.cleaned_data['is_staff']. You may consider using a choice field instead, w/ a dropdown w/ 3 entries, “Normal User”, “Staff User”, “Admin User”, and then set is_staff and is_superadmin according to the user’s selection.

It’s also still possible to use a ModelForm on the User model and just add the necessary extra fields in addition. It may or may not be worth it to you, depending how custom you’re getting.

Another note about your form – when it comes to editing existing users, this won’t be able to be used for that w/ the current clean methods on username/email. But if you tweak those to exclude the current instance (if set) from the lookup, you will be able to use this form for editing existing users (though since it’s not a model form you’d need to populate the initial data manually).