django-masquerade 1.3
django-masquerade

``django-masquerade`` Documentation
===================================

Masquerade is a simple app to allow site administrators (IE, any user with
is_staff = True) to browse the site as a different user.

It is implemented via a middleware that looks for a specific key in the user's
session -- the user to masquerade as. Also included are views and templates
to allow the staff user to enter a username to masquerade and turn off
masquerading as well as a template tag that provides links to these views for
staff users.

Installation
------------
- ``pip install django-masquerade`` (or clone/fork)
- Add ``"masquerade"`` to your ``INSTALLED_APPS`` setting
- Include ``masquerade.urls`` from your project's root ``urls`` module
- Optionally load and use the ``masquerade`` template tag library in your templates.
- Add ``"masquerade.middleware.MasqueradeMiddleware"`` to your
  ``MIDDLEWARE`` setting. (``MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES`` for django pre-1.10) Note this must come after Session and
  Authentication middleware classes.

Note that there is one template supplied by this app,
``masquerade/mask_form.html``, which does not inherit from any other template.
I recommend you simply copy this into your own template directory and edit as
needed to match your site's look and feel.

Requirements
------------
``masquerade`` depends on django's SessionMiddleware and, obviously,
``django.contrib.auth``.

The unit tests depend on the mock_ library.

Template Tags
-------------
The ``masquerade`` template tag library provides the following tags:

- ``masquerade_link`` creates a link to either the "Masquerade as user" URL (if
  masquerading is not active) or the "Turn off masquerading" URL (if
  masquerading is active).

- ``masquerade_status`` displays the name of the (other) user that the
  currently logged in user is masquerading as.

**Note**: These template tags require that the ``request`` object be in the
template context, so use ``RequestContext`` to render the template and make
sure the ``django.core.context_processors.request`` context processor is used.

User Attributes
---------------
Two attributes are added to the ``request.user`` object by the masquerade middleware:

- ``is_masked``. True if masquerading is in use and this user is not actually the original user.

- ``original_user``. The non-masked user that initiated the masquerade. Set to None
if no masquerading is happening.

Settings
--------
The following settings can be set in your project's settings file.

- ``MASQUERADE_REDIRECT_URL`` (default: "/"). The URL to redirect the user to after
  masquerading is activated.
- ``MASQUERADE_REQUIRE_SUPERUSER`` (default: False). If set to true, only users
  with both is_staff and is_superuser set to True will be allowed to use this
  feature.
- ``MASQUERADE_REQUIRE_COMMON_GROUP`` (default: False). If set to true, only users
  with that have at least one common Group (django auth Group) with the masqueraded
  user will be allowed to masquerade as that user. If user is a superuser, this
  requirement is ignored.
- ``MASQUERADE_USER_SEARCH_FIELDS`` (default: ``['username', 'email']``). The
  list of fields on the User object that will be searched in the masquerade
  form.

Additionally, masquerade respects the ``USERNAME_FIELD`` value of custom user classes
implementing ``AbstractBaseUser``, although you must manually add the name of your username
field to the ``MASQUERADE_USER_SEARCH_FIELDS`` setting as well.

Signals
-------
``masquerade.signals`` defines two signals that can be attached to:

- ``masquerade.signals.mask_on`` is sent when the user successfully masquerades
  as another user. It is sent one argument, ``mask_username``, the username of
  the user being masqueraded as. The ``sender`` argument is an instance of
  ``masquerade.forms.MaskForm``.
- ``masquerade.signals.mask_off`` is sent when a masqueraded user visits the
  ``unmask`` view. It also receives a ``mask_username`` argument. The
  ``sender`` argument is an empty object.

Testing
------------
masquerade ships with a test runner. To run the unit tests, simply ``python run_tests.py``.

.. _mock: http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/mock/