Django Authentication With Email Instead of Usernames

A lot of the applications we build use email addresses instead of usernames. Personally I find it a lot easier to remember my email address than an ever growing list of usernames.

The way we do this is to write a simple custom auth backend in the following way:

1. In settings.py add the following lines (replace yourprojectname with the name of your app):

AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS = (
    'yourprojectname.backends.EmailAuthBackEnd',
    'django.contrib.auth.backends.ModelBackend',
)

2. Create a file called backends.py and put it in your root folder (i.e. the same folder as settings.py)

from django.contrib.auth.backends import ModelBackend
from django.contrib.admin.models import User

class EmailAuthBackEnd(ModelBackend):
    def authenticate(self, email=None, password=None,**kwargs):
        try:
            user = User.objects.get(email=email)  

            if user.check_password(password):
                return user
            return None
        except User.DoesNotExist:
            return None

3. In your views import the authenticate back end and then call the authenticate function:

from django.contrib.auth import authenticate
....
user = authenticate(email=email, password=password)