django-guardian

django-guardian is an implementation of per-object permissions on top of Django’s authorization backend. Read an introduction to per-object permissions on djangoadvent articles.

Documentation

Online documentation is available at https://django-guardian.readthedocs.io/.

See real-world usage: Check out Who Uses Guardian to see how thousands of projects worldwide use django-guardian in production.

Contributing

Please read CONTRIBUTING.md before opening a pull request. It documents the repository's issue-first workflow, branch targeting rules, local uv setup, required test and lint commands, documentation expectations, and AI/LLM contribution policy.

If you need to report a security issue, do not open a public issue. Follow SECURITY.md and use the repository's private vulnerability reporting flow.

Installation

To install django-guardian into your project run:

uv add django-guardian

TIP: Not using a package manager like uv or poetry for your django project? You probably should try them :). In the meantime, pip install django-guardian works just fine too.

Configuration

We need to hook django-guardian into our project.

Put guardian into your INSTALLED_APPS at settings module:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...
    'guardian',
)

Add extra authorization backend to your settings.py:

AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS = (
    'django.contrib.auth.backends.ModelBackend',
    'guardian.backends.ObjectPermissionBackend',
)

Create guardian database tables by running:

python manage.py migrate

Usage

After installation and project hooks we can finally use object permissions with Django.

Lets start really quickly:

>>> from django.contrib.auth.models import User, Group
>>> jack = User.objects.create_user('jack', 'jack@example.com', 'topsecretagentjack')
>>> admins = Group.objects.create(name='admins')
>>> jack.has_perm('change_group', admins)
False
>>> from guardian.shortcuts import assign_perm
>>> assign_perm('change_group', jack, obj=admins)
<UserObjectPermission: admins | jack | change_group>
>>> jack.has_perm('change_group', admins)
True

Of course our agent jack here would not be able to change_group globally:

>>> jack.has_perm('change_group')
False

Admin integration

Replace admin.ModelAdmin with GuardedModelAdmin for those models which should have object permissions support within admin panel.

For example:

from django.contrib import admin
from myapp.models import Author
from guardian.admin import GuardedModelAdmin

# Old way:
#class AuthorAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
#    pass

# With object permissions support
class AuthorAdmin(GuardedModelAdmin):
    pass

admin.site.register(Author, AuthorAdmin)

Django Unfold integration

Users of django-unfold will find that guardian is supported out of the box via a contrib module.

Release files for django-guardian 3.5.0

For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.

Source distribution (sdist)

Source distribution for django-guardian 3.5.0
File	Size	Uploaded
django_guardian-3.5.0.tar.gz	115.6 kB	Sep 12, 2026	Details

Built distribution (wheel)

Table of built distributions (wheels) for django-guardian 3.5.0
File	Interpreter	ABI	Platform	Reset
django_guardian-3.5.0-py3-none-any.whl 151.9 kB Sep 12, 2026	Python 3	none	any	Details

Total release size: 267.5 kB

Release files / django_guardian-3.5.0.tar.gz

Download URL	django_guardian-3.5.0.tar.gz
Size	115.6 kB
Tags	Source
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`d80b8ab86c28f92adef816996f4341fbea6790aa1f09006c5afc1ef0ea394871`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`63360d3eb841f9d6404fc74fdbc3b4d74b9217a0fcede406ab26cc9840506bf5`
Upload date	Sep 12, 2026
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	Yes
Uploaded via	`twine/7.0.0 CPython/3.13.14`

Provenance

Provenance describes where a file came from. On PyPI, provenance is shared via attestations, which provide a verifiable record of the build or publishing details. View details, limitations and caveats.

Identity

Publishing platform: GitHub Actions
Publishing repository: github.com/django-guardian/django-guardian
Publishing commit: github.com/django-guardian/django-guardian/tree/cfa6a6658e7773886d2e8ea6e12b215424f272ac

Workflow

Publishing configuration: github.com/django-guardian/django-guardian/blob/cfa6a6658e7773886d2e8ea6e12b215424f272ac/.github/workflows/release-publish.yml
Publishing logs: github.com/django-guardian/django-guardian/actions/runs/34709990094/attempts/1

Artifact

Subject: django_guardian-3.5.0.tar.gz
SHA-256 checksum: d80b8ab86c28f92adef816996f4341fbea6790aa1f09006c5afc1ef0ea394871 Verifying attestations

Release files / django_guardian-3.5.0-py3-none-any.whl

Download URL	django_guardian-3.5.0-py3-none-any.whl
Size	151.9 kB
Tags	Python 3
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`926eb17caf4991d467fd75d412a3040857bc4e111fc70bfe42e1c021826727e4`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`89c757463fa92db5d472d5be9209b255c901f7e64e4631ebf16818cb04ad0ac4`
Upload date	Sep 12, 2026
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	Yes
Uploaded via	`twine/7.0.0 CPython/3.13.14`

Provenance

Identity

Publishing platform: GitHub Actions
Publishing repository: github.com/django-guardian/django-guardian
Publishing commit: github.com/django-guardian/django-guardian/tree/cfa6a6658e7773886d2e8ea6e12b215424f272ac

Workflow

Publishing configuration: github.com/django-guardian/django-guardian/blob/cfa6a6658e7773886d2e8ea6e12b215424f272ac/.github/workflows/release-publish.yml
Publishing logs: github.com/django-guardian/django-guardian/actions/runs/34709990094/attempts/1

Artifact

Subject: django_guardian-3.5.0-py3-none-any.whl
SHA-256 checksum: 926eb17caf4991d467fd75d412a3040857bc4e111fc70bfe42e1c021826727e4 Verifying attestations