Back
Feb 18, 2010

User profiles with inheritance in Django

Usually users' profiles are stored in single model. When there are multiple user types, separation is made by some field like user_type.

Situation is a little more complicated when different data is needed for each user type.

Of course it's better when all users have same type and are granted different permissions. But since we got task to have separate user types - we'll have to solve it.

Simple solution

The most obvious solution is to make base profile with type identifier, which will pull needed model instance:

request.user.get_profile().get_final_profile()

But I don't really like this solution. Firstly, get_final_profile method is basically a big switch-case. Secondly - we must not forget to call extra method.

I wanted to simply write request.user.profile ans get needed profile instance. This is possible by combining two known tricks - Upcast and AutoOneToOneField.

Upcast

Allows to get sublass instance from base class instance.

AutoOneToOneField

Allows creating related objects on request. This field is not needed per se, only idea. Taking AutoOneToOneField as a base, it's easy to create a new one that calls upcast when related objects is requested.

Solution

class UpCastModel(models.Model):
    """
    Base class for models that are ment to be inherited.
    Introduces upcast method that returns child instance.
    """
    final_type = models.ForeignKey(ContentType, editable=False)

    def save(self, args, **kwargs):
        if not self.pk:
            self.final_type = ContentType.objects.get_for_model(type(self))
        super(UpCastModel, self).save(args, **kwargs)

    def upcast(self):
        if not hasattr(self, '_upcast'):
            if self.final_type.model_class == self.class:
                self._upcast = self
            else:
                self._upcast = self.final_type.get_object_for_this_type(id=self.pk)
        return self._upcast

    class Meta:
        abstract = True


class UpCastSingleRelatedObjectDescriptor(SingleRelatedObjectDescriptor):

    def get(self, instance, instance_type=None):
        parent = super(
            UpCastSingleRelatedObjectDescriptor, self
        ).get(instance, instance_type)
        return parent.upcast()


class UpCastOneToOneField(models.OneToOneField):
    """
    UpCastOneToOneField gets child of related object.
    """
    def contribute_to_related_class(self, cls, related):
        setattr(
            cls, related.get_accessor_name(),
            UpCastSingleRelatedObjectDescriptor(related)
        )

Now profile looks like this:

class BaseProfile(UpcastModel):
    user = UpCastOneToOneField(User)


class BoyProfile(BaseProfile):
    pass


class GirlProfile(CitizenProfile):
    pass

In order to get users, profile, we just need to write requst.user.profile.

Subscribe for the news and updates

More thoughts
May 9, 2018Technology
How to Generate PDF Files in Python with Xhtml2pdf, WeasyPrint or Unoconv

Programmatic generation of PDF files is a frequent task when developing applications that can export reports, bills, or questionnaires. In this article, we will consider three common tools for creating PDFs, including their installation and converting principles.

May 22, 2017Technology
Web Application Security: 10 Best Practices

Protection of WEB App is of paramount importance and it should be afforded the same level of security as the intellectual rights or private property. I'm going to cover how to protect your web app.

Feb 28, 2017Technology
Passing pieces of markup to components in Angular 2 and problems with dynamic content

In this article we'll research how to pass custom markup to Angular components and how to create different types of dynamic components.

Jan 22, 2017Technology
Django vs Rails Performance

This article is aimed for beginners, who are trying to choose between Ruby on Rails and Django. Let’s see which is fastest and why.

Jan 12, 2017Technology
Making Custom Report Tables Using AngularJS and Django

In this article I will tell you how to create an interactive interface with a widely customized visual look and different filtering to view reports.

Sep 23, 2010Technology
Dynamic class generation, QuerySetManager and use_for_related_fields

It appears that not everyone knows that in python you can create classes dynamically without metaclasses. I'll show an example of how to do it.So we've learned how to use custom QuerySet to chain requests:Article.objects.old().public()Now we need to make it work for related objects:user.articles.old().public()This is done using use_for_related_fields, but it needs a little trick.