[Fixed]-How to change default django User model to fit my needs?

The Django User model is structured very sensibly. You really don’t want to allow arbitrary characters in a username, for instance, and there are ways to achieve email address login, without hacking changes to the base model.

To simply store additional information around a user account, Django supports the notion of user profiles. While you don’t need to rely on the built in support to handle this, it is a convention that is commonly followed and it will allow you to play nice with the reusable Django apps that are floating around in the ether. For more information, see here.

If you want to actually modify the core User model but also “play nice” with reusable apps that rely on it, you’re opening a bit of a Pandora’s Box. Developers make base assumptions about how the core library is structured, so any changes may cause unexpected breakage. Nonetheless, you can monkeypatch changes to the base model, or branch a copy of Django locally. I would discourage the latter, and only recommend the former if you know what you’re doing.

I misread the question. Hope this post is helpful to anyone else.

#in models.py
from django.db.models.signals import post_save  

class UserProfile(models.Model):  
    user = models.ForeignKey(User)  
    #other fields here

    def __str__(self):  
          return "%s's profile" % self.user  

     def create_user_profile(sender, instance, created, **kwargs):  
        if created:  
           profile, created = UserProfile.objects.get_or_create(user=instance)  

post_save.connect(create_user_profile, sender=User) 

#in settings.py
AUTH_PROFILE_MODULE = 'YOURAPP.UserProfile'

This will create a userprofile each time a user is saved if it is created.
You can then use

  user.get_profile().whatever

Here is some more info from the docs

http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/auth/#storing-additional-information-about-users

You face a bit of a dilemma which really has two solutions if you’re committed to avoiding the profile-based customization already pointed out.

1. Change the User model itself, per Daniel’s suggestions
2. Write a CustomUser class, subclassing User or copying its functionality.

The latter suggestion means that you would have to implement some things that User does automatically manually, but I wonder whether that’s as bad as it sounds, especially if you’re at the beginning of your project. All you’d have to do is rewrite a middle-ware class and some decorators.

Of course, I don’t think this buys you anything that 1 won’t get you, except that your project shouldn’t break if you svn update your django. It may avoid some of the compatibility problems with other apps, but my guess is most problems will exist either way.

There are anumber of ways to do this, but here’s what I’d do: I’d allow a user to enter an email, username (which must contain at least one letter and no @ symbols) or mobile number. Then, when I validate it:

1. Check for the presence of @. If so, set it as the user’s email, hash it appropriately and set it as their username as well.
2. Check to see if it’s only numbers, dashes and +. Then, strip the appropriate characters and store it as both mobile number and username (if you’re storing the mobile number in another model for SMS purposes or something).
3. If it’s not either, just set it as username.

I’d also validate the user/phone/email field similarly on login and look in the appropriate place so that if, say, a user signs up with their mobile number and then changes their username (for some other purpose), they can still sign in with their mobile number.