Whats the best way to extend Anonymous User in Django?

Question

I want to make my User objects all have the same base behaviour and to do so I need to add a couple of methods / properties to Anonymous User.

I've already subclassed User to make richer user objects but I was wondering if anyone has done the same for Anonymous User? And if there are any preferred ways of doing it!

Answer 1

You should subclass or create a model that has a one to one relationship with the AnonymousUser class.

Answer 2

I'm starting to think a middleware is probably the easiest solution that checks the request.user class and if is AnonymousUser then replaces it with a subclassed AnonymousUser that has the extra properties.

That sound reasonable?

Answer 3

Your middleware suggestion got me thinking, and I now think the best idea is to overwrite the standard AuthenticationMiddleware. That class assigns a LazyUser object to the request, which is resolved to the correct user, when accessed, by calling contrib.auth.get_user. This is probably the right place to override things, so that it calls your customised get_user function which returns your subclassed AnonymousUser.