Django: Login a user after clicking on the activation link from email

Question

I have tried to login a user after the user clicks the activation link send to the user's email. But directly using the login() method will throw me the error 'User' object has no attribute 'backend'. I have tried using authenticate() method but since i need to use the password already stored in the backend, authenticate(username, password) does not return any user.

Here is my activation view

def activate(request, uidb64, token):
    try:
        uid = force_text(urlsafe_base64_decode(uidb64))
        user = User.objects.get(pk=uid)
    except(TypeError, ValueError, OverflowError, User.DoesNotExist):
        user = None
    if user is not None and account_activation_token.check_token(user, token):
        user.is_active = True
        user.save()
        login(request, user)
        return HttpResponse('Thank you for your email confirmation. Now you can login your account.')
    else:
        return HttpResponse('Activation link is invalid!')

To solve the issue of User object has no attribute backend I used authenticate as:

username = user.username
password = user.password
user = authenticate(username=username, password=password)
if user is not None:
    login(request, user)

No user is returned. Can somenone help me?

Edit: I am using Django 1.8.11 and python2.7

Traceback:
File "/home/sanip/naxa/source/fieldsight/venv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/handlers/base.py" in get_response
132.                     response = wrapped_callback(request, *callback_args, **callback_kwargs)
File "/home/sanip/naxa/source/fieldsight/onadata/apps/users/views.py" in activate
  628.         login(request, user)
File "/home/sanip/naxa/source/fieldsight/venv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/contrib/auth/__init__.py" in login
  112.     request.session[BACKEND_SESSION_KEY] = user.backend

Exception Type: AttributeError at /users/activate/NjYx/53u-911ceda96c18c2e7dce1/

Exception Value: 'User' object has no attribute 'backend'

Answer 1

Basically you need to provide the stock backend here directly as a variable

Try Again With This:

def activate(request, uidb64, token):
    try:
        uid = force_text(urlsafe_base64_decode(uidb64))
        user = User.objects.get(pk=uid)
    except(TypeError, ValueError, OverflowError, User.DoesNotExist):
        user = None
    if user is not None and account_activation_token.check_token(user, token):
        user.is_active = True
        user.save()
        user.backend = 'django.contrib.auth.backends.ModelBackend'   #<-- addition
        login(request, user)
        return HttpResponse('Thank you for your email confirmation. Now you can login your account.')
    else:
        return HttpResponse('Activation link is invalid!')