Reseting user's passwords from the admin site

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Days ago I was building a website using Django, and one of the requirements is that admins should be able to reset any user's password through the admin interface.

You already can change any user's password, but what I wanted is different. I wanted to send an email to the user saying something like:

You can reset the password of your username visiting the below link:

http://www.example.com/password/reset/

I was trying to find an app or snippet that already does that, but I couldn't find. After a few minutes, here is what I got:

admin site screenshot

Once admin clicks on the Reset password button, an email will be sent to that current user.

Well, the steps you need to follow are pretty simple:


Create a custom ModelAdmin:

Create an admin.py file inside your app directory, and write the following:

from django.contrib.auth.forms import PasswordResetForm
from django.contrib.auth.admin import UserAdmin

    class CustomUserAdmin(UserAdmin):
        ...
        def reset_password(self, request, user_id):
            if not self.has_change_permission(request):
                raise PermissionDenied
            user = get_object_or_404(self.model, pk=user_id)

            form = PasswordResetForm(data={'email': user.email})
            form.is_valid()

            form.save(email_template_name='my_template.html')
            return HttpResponseRedirect('..')

        def get_urls(self):
            urls = super(UserAdmin, self).get_urls()

            my_urls = patterns('',
                (r'^(\d+)/reset-password/$',
                         self.admin_site.admin_view(self.reset_password)
                ),
            )
            return my_urls + urls


Override the template to add the Reset Password link

Let's suppose your TEMPLATE_DIRS point to the directory templates/. Then you need to create a file named change_form.html inside templates/admin/auth/user with the following content:

{% extends "admin/change_form.html" %}
{% load i18n %}
{% block object-tools %}
    {% if change %}{% if not is_popup %}
        <ul class="object-tools">
            {# You can also give a name to that pattern and refer to it below using 'url' #}
            <li><a href="reset-password/" class="historylink">Reset password</a></li>

            <li><a href="history/" class="historylink">{% trans "History" %}</a></li>
            {% if has_absolute_url %}
                <li><a href="../../../r/{{ content_type_id }}/{{ object_id }}/" class="viewsitelink">
                    {% trans "View on site" %}</a>
                </li>
            {% endif%}
        </ul>
    {% endif %}{% endif %}
{% endblock %}


Register your ModelAdmin

from django.contrib.auth.models import User

admin.site.unregister(User)
admin.site.register(User, CustomUserAdmin)

That's it. Then you can easily go to any user you want, and if you click on the Reset Password button, an email will be sent to him/her.

By Oscar Mederos, Category: django

Tags: python / django /

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