How does a template in django get a user object?

Using the django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth

context processor, you can access the instance auth.User

in your template.

If TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS

contains this processor, each RequestContext

will contain these variables:

user

- an instance auth.User

representing the current user on the system (or an AnonymousUser instance if the client is not registered).

Just define django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth

in settings TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS

and then use {{user}}

in your template.

TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS = (
"django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth", # define this in your settings
....
)

      

        
        
        
      

    

Template context processors:

Its set of attributes is used to populate the context in the RequestContext. These callers take a request object as their argument and return a dictionary of items to be merged into the context.

By default, the following Django 1.6 installs the following context processors:

("django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth",
"django.core.context_processors.debug",
"django.core.context_processors.i18n",
"django.core.context_processors.media",
"django.core.context_processors.static",
"django.core.context_processors.tz",
"django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages")

      

        
        
        
      

    

What variables are there in the template?

You can find out which all the variables are present in the whole template by using parameters TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS

. Each context handler defined in it includes some variables in the context. For example, django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth

includes a variable user

containing an object user

, includes a variable in a template. django.core.context_processors.media

MEDIA_URL

To check if all variables are available in a template using different context processors, refer to this Django documentation.

Accessing an object request

in context

You can add django.core.context_processors.request

in TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS

to settings.py

and access the object request

in your context.

You can also access the current user as {{ request.user }}

. You will need to explicitly add this parameter as it is not present by default.

Add .request

context processor TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS

to your settings.

TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS = (
    ....
    `django.core.context_processors.request`,
    )

      

        
        
        
      

    

EDIT: (Thanks @Ozgur )

Also, add AUTHENTICATION_MIDDLEWARE

in the settings MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES

for the attribute user

to be set on the object.It request

was removed from the default settings MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES

in Django 1.7.

class AuthenticationMiddleware
Adds an attribute user

representing the currently logged in user to each incoming object HttpRequest

.

MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = (
    ...
    # explicitly add the 'AuthenticationMiddleware' class
    'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware',
)