Django built in Logout view `Method Not Allowed (GET): /users/logout/`

Method Not Allowed (GET): /users/logout/
Method Not Allowed: /users/logout/
[10/Dec/2023 12:46:21] "GET /users/logout/ HTTP/1.1" 405 0

This is happening when I went to url http://127.0.0.1:8000/users/logout/

urls.py:

from django.contrib.auth import views as auth_views

urlpatterns = [
    ...other urls...
    path('users/logout/', auth_views.LogoutView.as_view(), name='logout'),
]

I am expecting user to logout

Solution

Since django-5, you need to do this through a POST request, since it has side-effects. The fact that it worked with a GET request was (likely) a violation of the HTTP protocol: it made it possible for certain scripts to log out users, without the user wanting to. So a POST request also protects against cross-site request forgery (CSRF) ^[wiki].

So in the template, work with a mini-form:

<form method="post" action="{% url 'logout' %}">
    {% csrf_token %}
    <button type="submit">logout</button>
</form>

Also note that Django's LogoutView ^[Django-doc] does not render a page: it only works with a POST request that logs out the user that is making the request, and redirect to the page provided by the ?next_page=… parameter, or if such parameter is absent with LOGOUT_REDIRECT_URL ^[Django-doc]. Visiting the page will thus not work and return a 405 Method Not Allowed.

If you thus want to make a page to logout, you add an extra view:

from django.views.generic import TemplateView

urlpatterns = [
    # …,
    path(
        'do-logout/',
        TemplateView.as_view(template_name='my_template.html'),
        name='do-logout',
    )
]

where the my_template.html then thus contains such miniform. You can thus visit /do-logout/ (or use another path) to render a page with a miniform to log out.