base.html can't access {% if user.is_authenticated %}

Question

In my base.html user.is_authenticated always returns false...

I want the base template to toggle between 'login and logout'

help would be much appreciated

---

base.html

<div id="leftsidebar">
        {% block leftsidebar %}
            {% if user.is_authenticated %}
                <p><a href="/logout/">logout</a></p>
            {% else %}
                <p><a href="/login/">Login</a></p>
            {% endif %}
        {% endblock %}
</div> <!-- end leftsidebar -->

---

forms.py

from django import forms
from django.contrib.auth.models import User
from django.forms import ModelForm
from drinker.models import Drinker
from django.contrib.auth import authenticate, login, logout

class LoginForm(forms.Form):
    username        = forms.CharField(max_length=255, required=True, label=(u'User Name'))
    password        = forms.CharField(max_length=255, required=True, label=(u'Password'), widget= forms.PasswordInput(render_value=False))

---

views.py

from django.http import HttpResponseRedirect
from django.shortcuts import render_to_response
from django.template import RequestContext
from drinker.forms import RegistrationForm, LoginForm
from django.contrib.auth.models import User
from drinker.models import Drinker
from django.contrib.auth import authenticate, login, logout

def ProfileRequest(request):
        if request.user.is_authenticated():
                return render_to_response('profile.html')
        else:
                return render_to_response('/', {'user': request.user.username})

Answer 1

You're not passing anything in the context when the user is authenticated, so {{ user }} is empty. You could pass it explicitly in the context dictionary, ie the second argument, but a better thing to do is to use the context processors to do that automatically: these only run if you use a RequestContext.

There is a shortcut to do this for you:

from django.shortcuts import render

...
return render(request, 'profile.html', {})

Also note the else statement there makes no sense: if the user is not authenticated, there will be no username.

Answer 2

Use {% if request.user.is_authenticated %} instead of {% if user.is_authenticated %}.

Your template only knows about the variables you pass to it in the context plus the request.

Answer 3

My logic was wrong by having the else statement,

else will never pass the user to the template because its always authenticated :P

def ProfileRequest(request):
        if request.user.is_authenticated():
                return render_to_response('profile.html')
        else:
                return render_to_response('/', {'user': request.user.username})

corrected view definition below

def ProfileRequest(request):
        if request.user.is_authenticated():
                return render(request, 'profile.html', {})

plus i had to use render properly ( thank you very much for that Daniel Roseman :) )