django-friendship

This application enables you to create and manage follows, blocks and bi-directional friendships between users. It features:

• Friendship request objects that can be accepted, rejected, canceled, or marked as viewed.
• Hooks to easily list all friend requests sent or received by a given user, filtered by the status of the request.
• A blocklist for each user of users they've blocked.
• Tags to include information about friendships, blocks and follows in your templates.
• Integration with AUTH_USER_MODEL.
• Validation to prevent common mistakes.
• Faster server response time through caching

Requirements

Django 5.2, 6.0, and 6.1 + Python 3.11, 3.12, 3.13, 3.14, and 3.15 (including free-threaded 3.14t and 3.15t) since v1.12.0.

Previously:

• Django 4.2, 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, 6.0, and 6.1 + Python 3.10–3.14 since v1.10.0 (3.15 tested as a pre-release from v1.11.1)
• Django 4.2, 5.1, 5.2 + Python 3.9–3.13 since v1.9.6

Installation

1. pip install django-friendship
2. add "friendship" to INSTALLED_APPS and run python manage.py migrate.
3. Use the friendship manager in your own views, or wire up the URLconf to include the builtin views:

urlpatterns = [
    # other paths
    path("friendship/", include("friendship.urls"))
]

Usage

django-friendship provides a free API that gives you several ways to create and manage friendship requests or follows in your views. Add the following at the top of your views.py:

from django.contrib.auth.models import User
from friendship.models import Friend, Follow, Block

Getting Data about Friendships

• List all of a user's friends: Friend.objects.friends(user=request.user)
• Count of a user's friends: Friend.objects.friend_count(user=request.user)
• List all unread friendship requests: Friend.objects.unread_requests(user=request.user)
• List all unrejected friendship requests: Friend.objects.unrejected_requests(user=request.user)
• Count of all unrejected friendship requests: Friend.objects.unrejected_request_count(user=request.user)
• List all rejected friendship requests: Friend.objects.rejected_requests(user=request.user)
• List of all sent friendship requests: Friend.objects.sent_requests(user=request.user)
• Test if two users are friends: Friend.objects.are_friends(user1=request.user, user2=other_user) == True
• Test if a friendship request already exists between two users (either direction): Friend.objects.request_exists(from_user=request.user, to_user=other_user) == True

Getting Data about Follows

• List of a user's followers: Follow.objects.followers(user=request.user)
• List of who a user is following: Follow.objects.following(user=request.user)

Getting Data about Blocks

• List of a user's blockers: Block.objects.blocked(user=request.user)
• List of who a user is blocking: Block.objects.blocking(user=request.user)
• Test if a user is blocked: Block.objects.is_blocked(user1=request.user, user2=other_user) == True

Managing Friendships and Follows

See the cookbook for more task-oriented recipes.

Create a friendship request:

other_user = User.objects.get(pk=1)
Friend.objects.add_friend(
    from_user=request.user,  # The sender
    to_user=other_user,  # The recipient
    message="Hi! I would like to add you",  # optional
)

Let the user who received the request respond:

from friendship.models import FriendshipRequest

friend_request = FriendshipRequest.objects.get(
    from_user=request.user, to_user=other_user
)
friend_request.accept()
# or friend_request.reject()

A rejected request does not block future requests — the sender may request again later. To cap how many friends a user can have, see FRIENDSHIP_MAX_FRIENDS under Settings.

To remove the friendship relationship between request.user and other_user, do the following:

Friend.objects.remove_friend(from_user=request.user, to_user=other_user)

Make request.user a follower of other_user:

Follow.objects.add_follower(follower=request.user, followee=other_user)

Make request.user block other_user:

Block.objects.add_block(blocker=request.user, blocked=other_user)

Make request.user unblock other_user:

Block.objects.remove_block(blocker=request.user, blocked=other_user)

Templates

You can use django-friendship tags in your templates. First enter:

{% load friendshiptags %}

Then use any of the following:

{% friends request.user %}
{% followers request.user %}
{% following request.user %}
{% friend_requests request.user %}
{% blockers request.user %}
{% blocking request.user %}

Signals

django-friendship emits the following signals (from friendship.signals):

• friendship_request_created
• friendship_request_rejected
• friendship_request_canceled
• friendship_request_viewed
• friendship_request_accepted
• friendship_removed
• follower_created
• follower_removed
• followee_created
• followee_removed
• following_created
• following_removed
• block_created
• block_removed

Each signal's sender is the emitting model, so you can connect a receiver scoped to it:

from django.dispatch import receiver

from friendship.models import Follow
from friendship.signals import follower_created


@receiver(follower_created, sender=Follow)
def on_follow(sender, follower, **kwargs):
    ...

Settings

django-friendship supports the following settings:

FRIENDSHIP_CONTEXT_OBJECT_NAME = "user"
FRIENDSHIP_CONTEXT_OBJECT_LIST_NAME = "users"
FRIENDSHIP_MANAGER_FRIENDSHIP_REQUEST_SELECT_RELATED_STRATEGY = (
    "select_related"  # ('select_related', 'prefetch_related', 'none')
)

# Optional cap on the number of friends each user may have. Unset (the
# default) means unlimited, so existing projects are unaffected. When set,
# accepting a request that would put either user over the limit raises
# friendship.exceptions.MaxFriendsExceededError.
FRIENDSHIP_MAX_FRIENDS = 800

Limiting the number of friends

By default a user may have unlimited friends. Set FRIENDSHIP_MAX_FRIENDS to cap it. The limit is checked when a request is accepted — if either user is already at the limit, accept() raises MaxFriendsExceededError and no friendship is created (the request is left intact so it can be accepted later, e.g. after removing another friend):

from friendship.exceptions import MaxFriendsExceededError

try:
    friend_request.accept()
except MaxFriendsExceededError:
    ...  # tell the user their friend list is full

# You can check a user's current friend count directly:
Friend.objects.friend_count(user=request.user)

Custom user models

django-friendship works with a custom AUTH_USER_MODEL. The bundled views and templates resolve users by your user model's USERNAME_FIELD (via get_username()), so a model that authenticates by, say, email works out of the box — the value captured in the friendship URLs is looked up against USERNAME_FIELD. For the default user model this is username, so nothing changes.

Contributing

Development takes place on GitHub. Bug reports, patches, and fixes are always welcome!

Need help?

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