Question

I have just started to look at web2py and wish to use username rather than email to log in.

I have added the following :-

auth.define_tables(username=True, signature=False)

and I need to add the validator, but I don’t know where to put it (sounds silly I know).

I have tried a few options and looked at many examples – but they all create a new table rather than use the existing auth_user.
I tried :-

auth_table = auth.settings.table_user
auth_table.username.requires = IS_NOT_IN_DB(db, auth_table.username)
auth.define_tables(username=True, signature=False)

But auth_table is None.

Answer 1

auth.settings.table_user will not exist until after you call auth.define_tables(). So, just change the order of your code:

auth.define_tables(username=True, signature=False)
auth_table = auth.settings.table_user
auth_table.username.requires = IS_NOT_IN_DB(db, auth_table.username)

Note, if you define your db object with DAL(..., lazy_tables=True), auth.settings.table_user will not exist. In that case, you can instead do auth_table = auth.table_user().