How to send password reset email from Django using django-rest-auth and Mailgun

Question

I'm setting up user authentication in Django with Django rest auth. Most things are working well but I can't get the password reset emails to send, either in the dummy backend or with Mailgun.

I followed this tutorial to set up the basic auth. Everything in the tutorial works great but it doesn't explain how to do password reset.

I have an account with Mailgun and am trying to use the sandbox to send mails.

# api/urls.py
from django.urls import include, path

urlpatterns = [
    path('rest-auth/', include('rest_auth.urls')),
    path('rest-auth/registration/', include('rest_auth.registration.urls')),
    path('users/', include('users.urls')),
]

I'm requesting a password reset for a registered user via the browsable API form: http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/v1/rest-auth/password/reset/

I enter an email address in the form and press 'POST'. The page displays this:

POST /api/v1/rest-auth/password/reset/
HTTP 200 OK
Allow: POST, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "detail": "Password reset e-mail has been sent."
}

However the email is not sent!

The mailgun logs show no activity - no email has been sent.

When I look on the Network tab in the browser, I don't see a post request.

Here's my setup using Mailgun:

EMAIL_HOST = 'smtp.mailgun.org'
EMAIL_PORT = 587
EMAIL_HOST_USER = 'postmaster@sandboxxxxx.mailgun.org'
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = 'xxxx'
EMAIL_USE_TLS = True

(I've put my real sandbox and password in the actual file)

First, with this in settings.py:

EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.console.EmailBackend'

I expect the email text to be logged to the terminal where the server is running with .'/manage.py runserver. However nothing is logged.

Then, with this in settings.py:

EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend'

I would expect the emails to be sent by Mailgun.

What obvious dumb thing have I missed?

I think that Django rest auth includes a default email template so I shouldn't have to create that manually should I?

Is there something extra I have to do for the admin page at http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/v1/rest-auth/password/reset/ to do its thing? http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/v1/rest-auth/login/ works fine, I can log in and see my token returned from the server.

Very grateful for any ideas!

Answer 1

I don't have a good answer for this but I gave up on using django-rest-auth for password reset and am using the django-contrib-auth urls and templates instead. This doesn't fully match my React front end but at least it provides the user functionality.