Question

I overrided django admin login page and would like to pass some variables to the login page. How can I do that?

Answer 1

Update: let me make it clear that I personally think you should write your own login view if you want to influence the context, namely because it’s so simple (you can copy and paste the ~20 lines to your own view).

Since what I like to do on stackoverflow is find a way around anyways, here’s a hacky alternative:

---

If you want to use the built in admin page the only method I see is to attach properties to AuthenticationForm.

Here’s django.contrib.auth.views.login:

def login(request, template_name='registration/login.html',
          redirect_field_name=REDIRECT_FIELD_NAME,
          authentication_form=AuthenticationForm):
    ....
    return render_to_response(template_name, {
        'form': form,
        redirect_field_name: redirect_to,
        'site': current_site,
        'site_name': current_site.name,
    }, context_instance=RequestContext(request))

The only place we can ‘hitch a ride’ into the login template while positively not affecting anything else is through AuthenticationForm.

from django.contrib.auth.forms import AuthenticationForm

AuthenticationForm.foobar = 'Hello'
...
(r'^accounts/login/$', 'django.contrib.auth.views.login', \
      {'authentication_form':AuthenticationForm),

# template
{{ form.foobar }}

Another alternative is to use a context processor, which injects variables into every view that uses RequestContext. Use this if your variable has some use in other templates as well.