django-rapyd-modernauth 0.0.7

A Django application that provides a custom User model where the username is the email address.

Django Rapyd ModernAuth

A small Django pluggable app that provides a custom User model where the email address is the username. No username field, no extra settings, no migrations beyond the initial one.

Inspiration

Users today expect to use their email address as the username during authentication. This works well because:

• Users already know their email addresses by heart.
• Since email addresses are unique, users don't need to remember yet another item when either signing up or logging into web applications. IMHO this is a significant factor that plays a vital role in user adoption.
• This is a time tested model and many web applications today follow this.

However, Django's default approach for authentication requires a user provide both a username and an email address during sign up and then just use the username during login.

Requirements

• Python 3.10, 3.11, 3.12, or 3.13
• Django 4.2 LTS or Django 5.2 LTS

Installation

Important: swap in this user model before running migrate for the first time. Switching AUTH_USER_MODEL mid-project requires hand-written data migrations across every foreign key to the user model. See Django's docs on substituting a custom user model.

Install the package:

pip install django-rapyd-modernauth

Add modernauth to INSTALLED_APPS:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    # ...
    "modernauth",
]

Point Django at the custom user model in settings.py:

AUTH_USER_MODEL = "modernauth.User"

Create the database tables:

python manage.py migrate

Usage

The custom User model behaves like Django's default AbstractUser with one difference: email is the unique identifier and there is no username field. Use get_user_model() rather than importing the model directly so your code keeps working if AUTH_USER_MODEL is ever swapped again.

from django.contrib.auth import get_user_model

User = get_user_model()

User.objects.create_user(email="[e-mail]", password="…")
User.objects.create_superuser(email="[e-mail]", password="…")

The admin's createsuperuser command will prompt for an email instead of a username:

python manage.py createsuperuser

Login forms, the admin, and authenticate() all use email as the credential.

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome — the project is intentionally small, so bug fixes, test improvements, and Django LTS support updates are the most likely to land. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the full development setup, test workflow, and release process.

For security vulnerabilities, see SECURITY.md for the private disclosure process. Do not file a public issue for security bugs.

License

Apache License 2.0 — see LICENSE.