Question

I’m about to put a beta version of the site I’m working on up on the web. It needs to have a beta code to restrict access. The site is written in django.

I don’t want to change the fundamental Auth system to accommodate a beta code, and I don’t care particularly that the security of the beta code is iron-clad, just that it’s a significant stumbling block.

How should I do this? It’s a fairly large project, so adding code to every view is far from ideal.

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That solution works well. The Middleware Class I ended up with this this:

from django.http import HttpResponseRedirect  class BetaMiddleware(object):     '''     Require beta code session key in order to view any page.     '''     def process_request(self, request):         if request.path != '/beta/' and not request.session.get('in_beta'):             return HttpResponseRedirect('%s?next=%s' % ('/beta/', request.path)) 

Answer 1

Start with this Django snippet, but modify it to check request.session['has_beta_access']. If they don’t have it, then have it return a redirect to a ‘enter beta code’ page that, when posted to with the right code, sets that session variable to True.

Making it a public beta then just consists of removing that middleware from your MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES setting.