Django: How can I apply the login_required decorator to my entire site ( excluding static media )?

Question

The example provides a snippet for an application level view, but what if I have lots of different ( and some non-application ) entries in my urls.py file, including templates? How can I apply this login required decorator to each of them?

(r'^foo/(?P<slug>[-\w]+)/$', 'bugs.views.bug_detail'),
(r'^$', 'django.views.generic.simple.direct_to_template', {'template':'homepage.html'}),

Answer 1

Use middleware.

http://www.djangobook.com/en/2.0/chapter17/ and http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.2/topics/http/middleware/#topics-http-middleware

I'm assuming this didn't change a whole lot in 1.2

Middleware allows you to create a class with methods who will process every request at various times/conditions, as you define.

for example process_request(request) would fire before your view, and you can force authentication and authorization at this point.

Answer 2

Dropped this into a middleware.py file in my project root:

from django.http import HttpResponseRedirect
from django.conf import settings
from re import compile

EXEMPT_URLS = [compile(settings.LOGIN_URL.lstrip('/'))]
if hasattr(settings, 'LOGIN_EXEMPT_URLS'):
    EXEMPT_URLS += [compile(expr) for expr in settings.LOGIN_EXEMPT_URLS]

class LoginRequiredMiddleware:
    """
    Middleware that requires a user to be authenticated to view any page other
    than LOGIN_URL. Exemptions to this requirement can optionally be specified
    in settings via a list of regular expressions in LOGIN_EXEMPT_URLS (which
    you can copy from your urls.py).

    Requires authentication middleware and template context processors to be
    loaded. You'll get an error if they aren't.
    """
    def process_request(self, request):
        assert hasattr(request, 'user'), "The Login Required middleware\
 requires authentication middleware to be installed. Edit your\
 MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES setting to insert\
 'django.contrib.auth.middlware.AuthenticationMiddleware'. If that doesn't\
 work, ensure your TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS setting includes\
 'django.core.context_processors.auth'."
        if not request.user.is_authenticated():
            path = request.path_info.lstrip('/')
            if not any(m.match(path) for m in EXEMPT_URLS):
                return HttpResponseRedirect(settings.LOGIN_URL)

Then appended projectname.middleware.LoginRequiredMiddleware to my MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES in settings.py.