Question

I’ve just read http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/auth/?from=olddocs (using django 1.2) & http://www.b-list.org/weblog/2006/jun/06/django-tips-extending-user-model/

I’m trying to create an inbox for my users where they could recieve private messages from other users, or potentially non-users via forms on the site. My question is, what is the best way to store these messages securely?

Should I extend the UserProfile (as demonstrated on b-list) & include a ForeignKey to a ‘Messages’ model? If so, how would I disable access to Messages unless its through UserProfile (I know I could do this in the view, but can I ‘turn off’ a model to only work through UserProfile) ? Or any other ideas, much appreciated!

Adam

Answer 1

UserProfile -> Message does not make much sense, it should be Message -> User

You should have a look at http://code.google.com/p/django-messages/ for a concrete implementation (although looks like it hasn’t been updated in a while).

For example there they have:

class Message(models.Model):
    """
    A private message from user to user
    """
    sender = models.ForeignKey(User, related_name='sent_messages', verbose_name=_("Sender"))
    recipient = models.ForeignKey(User, related_name='received_messages', null=True, blank=True, verbose_name=_("Recipient"))