demo-allauth-bootstrap

An out-of-the-box working example of django-allauth using Twitter Bootstrap and showing some basic functionality like grabbing user name and profile picture at signup.

tl;dr

You'll need to do quick setup with providers like Facebook and Google, but after that you should have a Django project with user signup and management that "just works", out of the box.

Objectives

1. Help anyone building a new site get up and going quickly with allauth.

2. Help remind me how a basic site hangs together ;)

Getting Running

1. Install Python. I used Python 3.4.3 at the moment but 2.7.x works fine too.

2. Install a virtualenv and requirements:

    $ cd demo-allauth-bootstrap
    $ virtualenv mypy
    $ . mypy/bin/activate
    $ pip install -r requirements.txt
   

3. Set up and Run:

    $ make configure   # Builds a seed.sql that can be used in `make rebuild`
    $ make rebuild     # A bit better than `python manage.py syncdb`
    $ make run         # The same as `python manage.py runserver`
   

4. Visit http://127.0.0.1:8000/

At this point you should have a site that allows registration and login of local users. If you enabled Google or Facebook during make configure, those destinations should allow you to join and log in to the site.

Some Notes

A word about seed data

During development I find that I frequently want to erase and rebuild the database, and setting up seed data like the admin user and Sites objects can be tedious. There are ways to set this up in code (the allauth source does this) but I've chosen to do it with a SQL file, produced with:

Makefile --> runs Python configure.py --> produces seed.sql

I want to point out that this use of Makefiles and seed data is nothing to do with allauth, it's just my hack way of getting set up and running.

You can edit seed.sql then destroy and rebuild your database easily with this:

make rebuild

A word about Makefiles

If your system doesn't have make (I'm looking at you, Windows), have a look in the Makefile for what commands to run. It's pretty straightforward.

Configure Facebook Login

Sarah describes this well here: http://www.sarahhagstrom.com/2013/09/the-missing-django-allauth-tutorial/#Create_and_configure_a_Facebook_app

Aside from UI changes, the method she described worked well.

Configure Google Login

To set up Google, follow instructions at https://developers.google.com/+/api/oauth#login-scopes, which is basically:

1. Go to https://console.developers.google.com/

2. Create a new app and enable the Google+ API

3. Left navigation APIs & auth > Credentials

4. Create new client ID

5. For Authorized Javascript Origins: http://127.0.0.1:8000

6. For Authorized Redirect Url: http://127.0.0.1:8000/accounts/google/login/callback/

Run make configure, enter the details, then make rebuild and make run. Alternatively edit the seed.sql file from a previous run and then make rebuild run.

How I built this

The best resources:

• Raymond's GitHub repo: https://github.com/pennersr/django-allauth

• allauth docs: http://django-allauth.readthedocs.org/en/latest/

• Sarah Hagstrom's magnificent article: http://www.sarahhagstrom.com/2013/09/the-missing-django-allauth-tutorial/

I first worked with Sarah's example to understand how the components worked together. Then I cloned the github repo and worked with the example directory, customising it to what made sense to me. I moved it to use Bootstrap only and added some basic standard stuff like a landing page and stubs for terms and contact.

I moved the bootstrap forms to use the bootstrap3 library. At the very least that made handling Django "messages" better (though see my notes in "Rough Edges" below). Read about bootstrap3 here: http://django-bootstrap3.readthedocs.org/en/latest/

Why I built this

I'd struggled with outdated Django registration modules before and was pleasantly surprised to find django-allauth. Sarah's tutorial is superb but I wanted something more full to use as a basis for future work, and figured it might help others.

Credits

Thanks to Raymond for django-allauth and Sarah for her tutorial.

Rough Edges

In no order:

• I don't like the handling of Django "messages". The messages accumulate in the cookie, which is weird on its own, and clear only when displayed. I don't get why it was done that way. I'm sure there are better ways to handle it; I just haven't looked into it yet.

• The default allauth rendering for profile (email, social accounts etc) is adequate but could do with some work.