Django-registration: Why is it so hard to save a user form, and is my simple solution OK?

Question

I have a Client model with a OneToOne relationship to User, to extend the User model. I need to be able to register a user (with a form that includes both the User and Client fields), and for that I used django-registration. Here is the view for registration, based on some snippets I found:

def register_client(request):
    if request.method == 'POST':
        userform = UserForm(request.POST, prefix='user')
        clientform = ClientForm(request.POST, prefix='client')
        if userform.is_valid() and clientform.is_valid():
            user = userform.save()
            client = clientform.save(commit=False)
            client.user = user
            client.save()
            login(request, user)
            return HttpResponseRedirect('/webapp/')
        else:
            return HttpResponse('error!')

    else:
        userform = UserForm(prefix='user')
        clientform = ClientForm(prefix='client')

    t = loader.get_template('register.html')
    c = RequestContext(request, {
        'userform':userform,
        'clientform':clientform,
    })
    return HttpResponse(t.render(c)) 

And here are my Forms:

from registration.forms import RegistrationForm

class UserForm(RegistrationForm):   
    def save(self):
        new_user = User.objects.create_user(
            username=self.cleaned_data['username'],
            email = self.cleaned_data['email'],
            password=self.cleaned_data['password1'])
        new_user.backend='django.contrib.auth.backends.ModelBackend'
        new_user.save()
        return new_user

class ClientForm(forms.ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = Client
        exclude = ['user']

I implemented the save() method for UserForm, since RegistrationForm doesn't implement one like any typical form.

Why does one have to go through all the trouble to implement some backend in order to just save a form? Is there any problem with this simple way? It does work.

(I also added the new_user.backend='django.contrib.auth.backends.ModelBackend' so I could login the user automatically after registration.)

Answer 1

I'm not sure how to answer your question. If your code works then I don't see a problem. But as zaphod said, django-registration does the saving and activating of the user for you.. If you want to add extra data to your user then use django-profiles like zaphod suggested too.

I myself use django-userena. It is like django-registration and django-profiles in one.