django-loginas

About

"Login as user" for the Django admin.

loginas supports Python 3 only, as of version 0.4. If you're on 2, use 0.3.6.

Installing django-loginas

• Add loginas to your Python path, or install using pip: pip install django-loginas

• Add the loginas app to your INSTALLED_APPS:

# settings.py
INSTALLED_APPS = [... 'loginas', ...]

• Add the loginas URL to your urls.py:

# urls.py
urlpatterns = [
    # from Django 3.2 on, make sure to add loginas urls before the admin site urls, i.e.:
    path('admin/', include('loginas.urls')),
    path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
]

• If you're using a custom User model, you'll need to add the template to it so the button shows up:

# admin.py
class YourUserAdmin(ModelAdmin):
    change_form_template = 'loginas/change_form.html'

Alternatively, you can add a change_form.html template containing just {% extends 'loginas/change_form.html' %} to your project under the path expected by your custom User model, e.g. .../templates/<app_label>/<model_name>/change_form.html.

At this point, you should be good to go. Just visit the Django admin, navigate to a user and you should see the "Log in as user" button at the top right of the screen.

Configuring

At this point, the only users who will be able to log in as other users are those with the is_superuser permission. If you use custom User models, and haven't specified that permission, or if you want to change which users are authorized to log in as others, you can define the CAN_LOGIN_AS setting, like so:

# settings.py

# This will only allow admins to log in as other users:
CAN_LOGIN_AS = lambda request, target_user: request.user.is_superuser

# This will only allow admins to log in as other users, as long as
# those users are not admins themselves:
CAN_LOGIN_AS = lambda request, target_user: request.user.is_superuser and not target_user.is_superuser

# You can also define a string path to a module:
CAN_LOGIN_AS = "utils.helpers.custom_loginas"

By default, clicking "Login as user" will send the user to settings.LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL. You can override this behavior like so:

# settings.py

LOGINAS_REDIRECT_URL = '/loginas-redirect-url'

In order to automatically restore the original user upon log out, replace the default log out with a special log out that restores the original login session from a signed session.

# settings.py

from django.core.urlresolvers import reverse_lazy
LOGOUT_URL = reverse_lazy('loginas-logout')

Additionally, you can specify the redirect url for logout (the default is settings.LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL).

# settings.py

from django.core.urlresolvers import reverse_lazy
LOGINAS_LOGOUT_REDIRECT_URL = reverse_lazy('admin:index')

By default, clicking "Login as user" will not update user.last_login. You can override this behavior like so:

# settings.py

LOGINAS_UPDATE_LAST_LOGIN = True

By default, the login switch message will generate Django admin LogEntry messages using the User model's USERNAME_FIELD like f"User {impersonator_user.getattr(USERNAME_FIELD)} logged in as {impersonated_user.getattr(USERNAME_FIELD)}." You can override this behavior by passing in a different field name:

# settings.py

LOGINAS_USERNAME_FIELD = 'email'

To run on servers with a Content Security Policy that blocks inline javascript, you can configure loading the javascript from a seperate file:

# settings.py

LOGINAS_CSP_FRIENDLY = True

For this to work you must make sure the static javacript can be found. See documentation. This example uses a symlink:

ln -s <path_to_site_packages>/loginas/static/loginas static/loginas

By default, specifying a reason is not required. You can override this behavior like so:

# settings.py

LOGINAS_LOGIN_REASON_REQUIRED = True

Other implementation suggestions

Existing logout view?

If you already have a logout view, you can modify to login the original user again after having had a "login as" session. Here's an example:

class LogoutView(LogoutView):
    template_name = 'myapp/logged_out.html'

    @method_decorator(never_cache)
    def dispatch(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
        from loginas.utils import restore_original_login
        restore_original_login(request)
        return redirect('myapp:login')

Template awareness

You can add the context processor loginas.context_processors.impersonated_session_status in your settings.py file if you'd like to be able to access a variable is_impersonated_session in all your template contexts:

# settings.py

TEMPLATES = [
    {
        ...
        'OPTIONS': {
            'context_processors': [
                'django.template.context_processors.debug',
                'django.template.context_processors.request',
                'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
                ...
                'loginas.context_processors.impersonated_session_status',
            ],
        },
    },
]

Note that django-loginas won't let you log in as other superusers, to prevent privilege escalation from staff users to superusers. If you want to log in as a superuser, first demote them to a non-superuser, and then log in.

License

This software is distributed under the BSD license.