How to add fields to Django User model and show it on registration form with django-registration?

Question

I noticed that the User model that Django provides does not have a Date of Birth Field. I do not want to write my own custom User class just to include this attribute. I am wondering if it is possible in some way to "attach" date of birth to the User model. If not what are the other simple options to make this work. I am also ok to save the contents of User Model to a profile model with additional date of birth information.

But would my form has to save both User and profile model which I am confused as how this work.

EDIT 2: (After implementing frnhr's solution):

Two issues: No activation email is sent out in the development server. I tried default User model with django-registration and I see activation email being sent out. but now, with the custom user model, no activation email is sent out.

when I login as admin, http://127.0.0.1:8000/admin/, I see no User model but only registration profiles and Groups. when I click registration profiles, it does not show all the information about User, but just username and activation key which is shown as already expired. Attached is a screenshot. how to fix this?

Answer 1

In newer versions of Django, making your own custom User model is quite painless. See this answer for details: https://stackoverflow.com/a/16125609/236195

You might run into problems if you are using some older third-party apps which have model relationships hardcoded to auth.models.User. Most of third-party apps which have ongoing development have probably switched already or will do so soon.

---

Edit - getting it to work with django-registration

myapp/models.py:

from django.contrib.auth.models import AbstractUser
from django.db import models
from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _

class CustomUser(AbstractUser):
    age = models.PositiveIntegerField(_("age"), null=True)  # this field is added to default User model

settings.py:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    # ...

    'registration_defaults',
    'registration',

    'myapp',
)

# ...

AUTH_USER_MODEL = "myapp.CustomUser"
ACCOUNT_ACTIVATION_DAYS = 2  # or something

urls.py (add this line):

   url(r'^accounts/', include('registration.backends.default.urls')),

myapp/admin.py (optionally):

from django.contrib import admin
from django.contrib.auth.admin import UserAdmin
from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _

from .models import CustomUser


class CustomUserAdmin(UserAdmin):
    fieldsets = (
        (None, {'fields': ('username', 'password')}),
        (_('Personal info'), {'fields': ('first_name', 'last_name', 'email', 'age')}),  # added "age" field
        (_('Permissions'), {'fields': ('is_active', 'is_staff', 'is_superuser',
                                       'groups', 'user_permissions')}),
        (_('Important dates'), {'fields': ('last_login', 'date_joined')}),
    )


admin.site.register(CustomUser, CustomUserAdmin)

django-registration

Get it from here: https://bitbucket.org/fhrzenjak/django-registration and put it in your project folder.

Disclaimer: this is my fork of the original django-registration repo, with applied patch for custom user models by mrginglymus: https://bitbucket.org/ubernostrum/django-registration/pull-request/30/django-15-compatibility-with-custom-user/diff

Django-registration-defaults is a collection of default templates from here: https://github.com/yourcelf/django-registration-defaults It's pip-installable

EDIT 2 - accept a custom field on registration

Well, this is a separate question, but ok here is how...

Create a MyRegistrationFormform:

from registration.forms import RegistrationForm

class MyRegistrationForm(RegistrationForm):
    age = forms.CharField(required=False)

In your urls.py add a line before django-registration include. That will override whatever is in the include:

url(r'^accounts/register/$',
        RegistrationView.as_view(form_class=MyRegistrationForm),
        name='registration_register',
    ),
url(r'^accounts/', include('registration.backends.default.urls')),

Modify your custom user model to respond on user_registered signal and save the additional data:

class CustomUser(AbstractUser):
    age = models.PositiveIntegerField(_("age"), null=True)

    @classmethod
    def user_created(cls, sender, user, request, **kwargs):
        from myapp.forms import MyRegistrationForm
        form = MyRegistrationForm(request.POST)
        user.age = form.data.get('age', None)
        user.save()
        pass

from registration.signals import user_registered
user_registered.connect(CustomUser.user_created)