[Fixed]-How to customize django rest auth password reset email content/template

I recently needed to implement the same thing in one of my projects and could not find a thorough answer anywhere.

So I’m leaving my solution here for anyone who needs it in the future.

Expanding on mariodev’s suggestion:

1. Subclass PasswordResetSerializer and override save method.

yourproject_app/serializers.py

from django.conf import settings
from rest_auth.serializers import PasswordResetSerializer as _PasswordResetSerializer

class PasswordResetSerializer(_PasswordResetSerializer):
    def save(self):
        request = self.context.get('request')
        opts = {
            'use_https': request.is_secure(),
            'from_email': getattr(settings, 'DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL'),

            ###### USE YOUR TEXT FILE ######
            'email_template_name': 'example_message.txt',

            'request': request,
        }
        self.reset_form.save(**opts)

2. Configure AUTH_USER_MODEL

yourproject/settings.py

###### USE YOUR USER MODEL ######
AUTH_USER_MODEL = 'yourproject_app.ExampleUser'

3. Connect custom PasswordResetSerializer to override default

yourproject/settings.py

REST_AUTH_SERIALIZERS = {
    'PASSWORD_RESET_SERIALIZER': 
        'yourproject_app.serializers.PasswordResetSerializer',
}

4. Add the path to the directory where your custom email message text file is located to TEMPLATES

yourproject/settings.py

TEMPLATES = [
    {
        ...
        'DIRS': [os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'yourproject/templates')],
        ...
    }
]

5. Write custom email message (default copied from Django)

yourproject/templates/example_message.txt

{% load i18n %}{% autoescape off %}
{% blocktrans %}You're receiving this email because you requested a password reset 
for your user account at {{ site_name }}.{% endblocktrans %}

{% trans "Please go to the following page and choose a new password:" %}
{% block reset_link %}
{{ protocol }}://{{ domain }}{% url 'password_reset_confirm' uidb64=uid token=token %}
{% endblock %}
{% trans "Your username, in case you've forgotten:" %} {{ user.get_username }}

{% trans "Thanks for using our site!" %}

{% blocktrans %}The {{ site_name }} team{% endblocktrans %}

{% endautoescape %}

UPDATE: This solution was written for an older version of django-rest-auth (v0.6.0). As I can tell from the comments, it seems there have been some updates made to the source package that more readily handle custom email templates out-of-box. It is always better to use methods defined in a package rather than overriding them like in my solution. Though once a necessity, it may not be so any longer.

You can inherit PasswordResetSerializer and override the get_email_options method. For example:

from rest_auth.serializers import PasswordResetSerializer


class CustomPasswordResetSerializer(PasswordResetSerializer):
    def get_email_options(self):
        return {
            'subject_template_name': 'registration/password_reset_subject.txt',
            'email_template_name': 'registration/password_reset_message.txt',
            'html_email_template_name': 'registration/'
                                    'password_reset_message.html',
            'extra_email_context': {
                'pass_reset_obj': self.your_extra_reset_obj
            }
        }

A simple solution is
Create over templates directory:

-templates
   -registration
       password_reset_email.html

with content you want.
Django rest-auth use django.contrib.auth templates.

So for the dj-rest-auth, this is how I did it:

from django.contrib.auth.tokens import default_token_generator
from django.contrib.sites.shortcuts import get_current_site
from django.urls.base import reverse
from allauth.account import app_settings
from allauth.account.adapter import get_adapter
from allauth.account.utils import user_pk_to_url_str, user_username
from allauth.utils import build_absolute_uri
from dj_rest_auth.forms import AllAuthPasswordResetForm
from dj_rest_auth.serializers import PasswordResetSerializer

class CustomAllAuthPasswordResetForm(AllAuthPasswordResetForm):
    def save(self, request, **kwargs):
        current_site = get_current_site(request)
        email = self.cleaned_data['email']
        token_generator = kwargs.get('token_generator',
                                     default_token_generator)

        for user in self.users:

            temp_key = token_generator.make_token(user)

            # save it to the password reset model
            # password_reset = PasswordReset(user=user, temp_key=temp_key)
            # password_reset.save()

            # send the password reset email
            path = reverse(
                'password_reset_confirm',
                args=[user_pk_to_url_str(user), temp_key],
            )
            url = build_absolute_uri(None, path) # PASS NONE INSTEAD OF REQUEST

            context = {
                'current_site': current_site,
                'user': user,
                'password_reset_url': url,
                'request': request,
            }
            if app_settings.AUTHENTICATION_METHOD != app_settings.AuthenticationMethod.EMAIL:
                context['username'] = user_username(user)
            get_adapter(request).send_mail('account/email/password_reset_key',
                                           email, context)
        return self.cleaned_data['email']

class CustomPasswordResetSerializer(PasswordResetSerializer):
    @property
    def password_reset_form_class(self):
        return CustomAllAuthPasswordResetForm

# settings.py
REST_AUTH_SERIALIZERS = {
    'PASSWORD_RESET_SERIALIZER':
    'api.users.api.serializers.CustomPasswordResetSerializer',
}

By passing None to build_absolute_uri instead of the original request, it will take the value you have in django.contrib.sites module with SITE_ID=1. So whatever you have defined as your domain in the Django admin will now be the domain in the reset URL. This makes sense if you want to have the password reset URL point to your frontend, that might be a React application running on a different domain.

Edit:
My PR regarding this issue was merged, with the next release this will be possible to set in your settings. Checkout the docs for dj-rest-auth to see which setting you need to set.

if you want to use a html email template, an update to Brian’s answer would be to add

'html_email_template_name': 'account/email/example_message.html',

just below

###### USE YOUR TEXT FILE ######
'email_template_name': 'account/email/example_message.txt',

this way you can the email with a html template

You can see why this happens by inspecting the send_mail method of the PasswordResetForm class

class PasswordResetForm(forms.Form):
     email = forms.EmailField(label=_("Email"), max_length=254)

     def send_mail(self, subject_template_name, email_template_name,
              context, from_email, to_email, html_email_template_name=None):
              """
               Send a django.core.mail.EmailMultiAlternatives to `to_email`.
              """
             subject = loader.render_to_string(subject_template_name, context)
             # Email subject *must not* contain newlines
             subject = ''.join(subject.splitlines())
             body = loader.render_to_string(email_template_name, context)

             email_message = EmailMultiAlternatives(subject, body, from_email, [to_email])
             if html_email_template_name is not None:
                 html_email = loader.render_to_string(html_email_template_name, context)
                 email_message.attach_alternative(html_email, 'text/html')

             email_message.send()```

Create directory with path as following in your template folder

templates/admin/registration/

Now copy all files in django/contrib/admin/templates/registration/ into this directory you just created. You can find this directory where you have installed django. In linux, it can be find here

/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/contrib/admin/templates/registration

You will need root priviliges for accessing this.

Now when you will send email, templates in you just copied in your project will be used.

This link might be helpful. With it I was able to find where the email templates were and how to customize them.

You can find the info at the bottom of the page under
Customize the email message
http://www.sarahhagstrom.com/2013/09/the-missing-django-allauth-tutorial/#Customize_the_email_message

For anyone using all-auth in addition to dj-rest-auth, kindly note that solutions that override get_email_options() will NOT work as dj-rest-auth uses the AllAuthPasswordResetForm from all-auth pkg when it is found under installed_apps in settings. This uses different code than dj-rest-auth to send mails, so the override won’t come into effect. Instead you will have to override the ‘template_prefix’ in the all-auth form and/or update the url as needed by extending the form, in addition to overriding the serializer to use your custom form. This tutorial is a good reference that I found.
Hope it saves someone’s time 🙂