How to get the list of the authenticated users?

Question

I would like to display the list of the authenticated users.

On the documentation: http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/auth/

class models.User
is_authenticated()¶
Always returns True. This is a way to tell if the user has been authenticated. ...

You can know on the template side is the current User is authenticated or not:

{% if user.is_authenticated %} {% endif %}

But I didn't found the way the get the list of the authenticated users.

Any idea?

Answer 1

Going along with rz's answer, you could query the Session model for non-expired sessions, then turn the session data into users. Once you've got that you could turn it into a template tag which could render the list on any given page.

(This is all untested, but hopefully will be close to working).

Fetch all the logged in users...

from django.contrib.auth.models import User
from django.contrib.sessions.models import Session
from django.utils import timezone

def get_all_logged_in_users():
    # Query all non-expired sessions
    # use timezone.now() instead of datetime.now() in latest versions of Django
    sessions = Session.objects.filter(expire_date__gte=timezone.now())
    uid_list = []

    # Build a list of user ids from that query
    for session in sessions:
        data = session.get_decoded()
        uid_list.append(data.get('_auth_user_id', None))

    # Query all logged in users based on id list
    return User.objects.filter(id__in=uid_list)

Using this, you can make a simple inclusion template tag...

from django import template
from wherever import get_all_logged_in_users
register = template.Library()

@register.inclusion_tag('templatetags/logged_in_user_list.html')
def render_logged_in_user_list():
    return { 'users': get_all_logged_in_users() }

logged_in_user_list.html

{% if users %}
<ul class="user-list">
    {% for user in users %}
    <li>{{ user }}</li>
    {% endfor %}
</ul>
{% endif %}

Then in your main page you can simply use it where you like...

{% load your_library_name %}
{% render_logged_in_user_list %}

EDIT

For those talking about the 2-week persistent issue, I'm assuming that anyone wanting to have an "active users" type of listing will be making use of the SESSION_EXPIRE_AT_BROWSER_CLOSE setting, though I recognize this isn't always the case.

Answer 2

Most reliable solution would only be the something you store when user logs in or logs out. I saw this solution and i think its worth sharing.

models.py

from django.contrib.auth.signals import user_logged_in, user_logged_out

class LoggedUser(models.Model):
    user = models.ForeignKey(User, primary_key=True)

    def __unicode__(self):
        return self.user.username

    def login_user(sender, request, user, **kwargs):
        LoggedUser(user=user).save()

    def logout_user(sender, request, user, **kwargs):
        try:
            u = LoggedUser.objects.get(user=user)
            u.delete()
        except LoggedUser.DoesNotExist:
            pass

    user_logged_in.connect(login_user)
    user_logged_out.connect(logout_user)

views.py

logged_users = LoggedUser.objects.all().order_by('username')

Answer 3

Sounds similiar with this solution, you can create a custom middleware to do it. I found awesome OnlineNowMiddleware here.

Where you will get these;

1. {{ request.online_now }} => display all list of online users.
2. {{ request.online_now_ids }} => display all online user ids.
3. {{ request.online_now.count }} => display total online users.

How to set up?

Create file middleware.py where location of settings.py has been saved, eg:

projectname/projectname/__init__.py
projectname/projectname/middleware.py
projectname/projectname/settings.py

Then following this lines;

from django.core.cache import cache
from django.conf import settings
from django.contrib.auth.models import User
from django.utils.deprecation import MiddlewareMixin

ONLINE_THRESHOLD = getattr(settings, 'ONLINE_THRESHOLD', 60 * 15)
ONLINE_MAX = getattr(settings, 'ONLINE_MAX', 50)


def get_online_now(self):
    return User.objects.filter(id__in=self.online_now_ids or [])


class OnlineNowMiddleware(MiddlewareMixin):
    """
    Maintains a list of users who have interacted with the website recently.
    Their user IDs are available as ``online_now_ids`` on the request object,
    and their corresponding users are available (lazily) as the
    ``online_now`` property on the request object.
    """

    def process_request(self, request):
        # First get the index
        uids = cache.get('online-now', [])

        # Perform the multiget on the individual online uid keys
        online_keys = ['online-%s' % (u,) for u in uids]
        fresh = cache.get_many(online_keys).keys()
        online_now_ids = [int(k.replace('online-', '')) for k in fresh]

        # If the user is authenticated, add their id to the list
        if request.user.is_authenticated:
            uid = request.user.id
            # If their uid is already in the list, we want to bump it
            # to the top, so we remove the earlier entry.
            if uid in online_now_ids:
                online_now_ids.remove(uid)
            online_now_ids.append(uid)
            if len(online_now_ids) > ONLINE_MAX:
                del online_now_ids[0]

        # Attach our modifications to the request object
        request.__class__.online_now_ids = online_now_ids
        request.__class__.online_now = property(get_online_now)

        # Set the new cache
        cache.set('online-%s' % (request.user.pk,), True, ONLINE_THRESHOLD)
        cache.set('online-now', online_now_ids, ONLINE_THRESHOLD)

Finally update your MIDDLEWARE inside file of projectname/projectname/settings.py:

MIDDLEWARE = [
    'django.middleware.security.SecurityMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.cache.UpdateCacheMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.cache.FetchFromCacheMiddleware',
    ....
    # Custom middleware
    'projectname.middleware.OnlineNowMiddleware',
]

For other condition, you can also check the current user is online or not with:

{% if request.user in request.online_now %}
    {# do stuff #}
{% endif %}

Answer 4

There is no easy, built-in way to do what you want that I know of. I'd try a combination of expiring sessions and filtering on last_login. Maybe even write a custom manager for that.