Django auth remember app

Add the auth_remember authentication backend to django:

AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS = (
    'django.contrib.auth.backends.ModelBackend',
    'auth_remember.backend.AuthRememberBackend',
)

Add the remember middleware in your settings, right after AuthenticationMiddleware:

MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = (
    ...
    'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware',
    'auth_remember.middleware.AuthRememberMiddleware',
    ...
)

Add auth_remember to INSTALLED_APPS:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    'auth_remember',
)

Set the cookie name and expire time (optional):

AUTH_REMEMBER_COOKIE_NAME = 'remember_token'
AUTH_REMEMBER_COOKIE_AGE = 86400 * 28  # 4 weeks by default

Set the expire time of the session to browser close (optional):

SESSION_EXPIRE_AT_BROWSER_CLOSE = True

To remember a user add the following code to your authentication handler:

from auth_remember import remember_user
remember_user(request, user)

Use the user.is_fresh attribute to test if the user is fresh:

{% if user.is_fresh %}
    This user session is fresh
{% else %}
    This user session is NOT fresh
{% endif %}

Under the hood auth_remember uses the session var AUTH_REMEMBER_FRESH to indicate if the user session is fresh. The name of the session var can be changed by setting the AUTH_REMEMBER_SESSION_KEY in you're settings file.

If You Have a Custom User Model

From Django 1.5 on wards it is possible to swap a different model in for the usual auth.user. In this case the migrations included in this module will not work, since they refer to the default user model. One workaround for this problem is to copy the auth_remember directory in to you project and either delete the migrations subdirectory (forcing it to rely on old-fashioned syncdb), or update the migration with this command:

./manage.py schemamigration auth_remember --update --initial

More information

See:

• http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2004/01/19/persistent_login_cookie_best_practice/
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/549/the-definitive-guide-to-forms-based-website-authentication#477579

TODOs

• Introduce settings for AUTH_REMEMBER_COOKIE_DOMAIN