[Django]-Django – How to use decorator in class-based view methods?

Since Django 1.9, as per the docs, it is possible to apply decorator in the next way:

from django.contrib.auth.decorators import login_required
from django.utils.decorators import method_decorator

@method_decorator(login_required, name='dispatch')
class YourClassBasedView(TemplateView):
    ...

where name is the name of the method to be decorated.

or in case of few decorators:

from django.contrib.auth.decorators import login_required
from django.views.decorators.cache import never_cache
from django.utils.decorators import method_decorator

decorators = [never_cache, login_required]

@method_decorator(decorators, name='dispatch')
class YourClassBasedView(TemplateView):
    ...

There is a very simple solution to achieve what you want, and it doesn’t implies decorating dispatch method. You must use the method_decorator over your methods (get/post) and pass the decorator call (not the decorator itself) as a parameter.

In your case it would be:

from django.utils.decorators import method_decorator

class ProfileView(View):
    template_name = 'index.html'

    # Return profile of any role (client/employee/admin)
    @method_decorator(login_required())
    def get(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
        ...

    # Client sign up
    # No decorator is needed
    def post(self, request):
        ...

Note the parethesis in the login_required decorator.

You can pass any function-oriented decorator, even a custom one. For instance:

def white_list_check():
    def decorator(func):
        def wrapper(request, *args, **kwargs):
            ip = request.META.get('REMOTE_ADDR', '0.0.0.0')
            if ip in WHITE_LIST:
                return func(request, *args, **kwargs)
            else:
                return HttpResponseForbidden()
        return wrapper
    return decorator

And then, again:

class YourView(View):

    @method_decorator(white_list_check())
    def get(self, request):
        ...

Some decorators like never_cache can be used in the urls.py in stead of the old way: in views.py

e.g. the never_cache decorator:

in the old style views.py:

from django.views.decorators.cache import never_cache

@never_cache
def oldstyle_view(request):
    # and so on

when using class based views, in urls.py:

from django.views.decorators.cache import never_cache

urlpatterns = patterns('',
     (r'someurl/^$', never_cache(SomeClassBasedView.as_view())),
)

Edit 1st aug 2015

Note: this can be handy for those views where you do not have a complete view defined in views.py, otherwhise the decorator can be applied to the depatch method in the view as well.

You can override dispatch method and call different decorators based on type of request:

from django.utils.decorators import method_decorator

class ProfileView(View):
    ... 

    def dispatch(self, *args, **kwargs):
        dispatch_method = super(ProfileView, self).dispatch

        if self.request.method == 'GET':
            dispatch_method = method_decorator(my_get_decorator)(dispatch_method)
        elif self.request.method == 'POST':
            dispatch_method = method_decorator(my_post_decorator)(dispatch_method)

        return dispatch_method(*args, **kwargs)

You need to apply the decorator to the dispatch method of the class based view. This can be done as follows:

class ProfileView(View):

    @youdecorator
    def dispatch(self,request,*args,**kwargs):
        return super(ProfileView,self).dispatch(request,*args,**kwargs)
    //Rest of your code.