Django permission_required error message?

Question

I've added this decorator to one of my views

@permission_required('codename')

When a user visits that page and doesn't have the required permissions, he is redirected the login page, but it doesn't really tell him why he's been redirected there. Worse yet, if he logs in, and still doesn't have the permissions, he's going to be completely clueless as to why he can't access that page!

Isn't there a way I can tap into the messages framework and post an error at the same time?

Answer 1

You could use login_url parameter in this decorator to redirect to some other page, rather than login page. Or you can simply write your own decorator based on the code from django:

def permission_required(perm, login_url=None):
    """
    Decorator for views that checks whether a user has a particular permission
    enabled, redirecting to the log-in page if necessary.
    """
    return user_passes_test(lambda u: u.has_perm(perm), login_url=login_url)

Simply change login_url to some redirect_to and it won't cause any confusion.

Answer 2

Use @permission_required_or_403('codename')

This will redirect the users to a 403 'permission denied' error page.

Answer 3

You can tap into the messages framework and provide an error message. See my answer to an identical question.