Question

I’d like to work with user data in main base.html which is my main template.

I actually use the login generic view. When I’m logged in on the homepage it gives me user information but in all other pages user is blank.

I’ve read many things about this: request, RequestContext, I’ve added django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth to the processors list.

Any idea how to get this variable to show everywhere?

Answer 1

Two ways:

If you’re using django 1.4+, you can use, render() when returning from your views:

def my_view(request):
    ...
return render(request, 'template.html', ctx)

If you’re using older django or you don’t like the render approach, you would return RequestContext using render_to_response, like this:

def my_view(request):
   ...
return render_to_response('template.html', ctx, context_instance=RequestContext(request))

Edit: sorry, forgot to actually answer question. If you’re rendering your templates using one of the above ways and have:

• django.contrib.auth in your INSTALLED_APPS
• auth in midleware
• auth in context_processors
  (take a look at default settings.py file: https://github.com/django/django/blob/master/django/conf/global_settings.py )

Then you can use: {{ user }} and {{ user.is_anonymous }} to figure out what’s going on.