Django admin.site.urls only accessible to superuser (The admin login page only accessible to superuser)

Question

What i want is to limit access to the django admin login page to only the superuser. Meaning if you are not the superuser, and try to access http://127.0.0.1:8000/admin - you should be redirected to 404 page , something like that.The means or the custom view to perform this authentication is the challenge. Please somebody assist me with a hint on how to do it?

  urlpatterns = [
     path('admin/', my_custom_function,name="check_if_superuser"),


     # when somebody hits this url pattern , he/she should be taken to the 
     # function above for checking if superuser befor being redirected to 
     # django admin login page
 ]

and in my views.py i have the following function that does the authentication

    def  my_custom_function(request):
         if request.user.is_superuser():
            #... redirect to django admin login page

         else:
             # return render(404_page)

yeah something like that.

Answer 1

By default, django admin allows login for superuser or stuff user only. So, it is kind of safe to have a admin login panel. Also, if you want to restrict that login path, I think its best to put a firewall on that particular route. So that only whitelisted IPs can access it. You can use NGINX for this, and configuration should be something like this:

location /admin {
  # block one workstation
  deny    192.168.1.1;
  # allow anyone in 192.168.1.0/24
  allow   192.168.1.0/24;
  # drop rest of the world 
  deny    all;
}

This article could be helpful with the configuration.

Answer 2

I assume there might be a catch 22 in the described scenario.

1. To check user rights there should be a logged in user
2. If you put check only on available users - is_superuser and show 404:

• logged in, non super_user will receive 404
• not logged in visitor can go to admin page

2. If you add check whether user is logged in and if not show 404 as well:

• no one can login from admin page, unless logged in somewhere else and got to admin afterwards

Both scenarios sound inconsistent to me. I think what you are trying to achieve is intended to be done by Django framework in a slightly different way.

---

There is has_permission() in AdminSite class in django.contrib.admin.sites which

Return True if the given HttpRequest has permission to view at least one page in the admin site

and by default returns request.user.is_active and request.user.is_staff If you change it in your admin.py, only active superusers will be able to utilize admin:

from django.contrib import admin

def has_superuser_permission(request):
    return request.user.is_active and request.user.is_superuser

# Only active superuser can access root admin site (default)
admin.site.has_permission = has_superuser_permission

And even logged in non-sups will be shown message about insufficient rights and prompted to re-login