How to check which user is logged in with Django?

Question

I am currently working on a website, and I wanted to know how do I check which user is logged in. Just to clarify I am using the Django built in models from django.contrib.auth.models import User to do my login, logout etc. What I don't know how to do is check which user is logged in, I know the method

if user.is_authenticated:
    # Other code goes here

But this method only checks weather the user is logged in not which user is logged in?

Answer 1

You can find info about the logged user in the request.user method

Here an example if you want to know the username:

username = request.user.username

Answer 2

If you make use of the AuthenticationMiddleware [Django-doc] (this is the default if you create a new project), then this middleware will add a .user attribute [Django-doc] to the request. This is a lazy loaded user model object, or the AnonymousUser [Django-doc] if the user has not logged in.

But if tyhe user thus has logged in, this is a user model object just like any other. You thus can access fields, methods, etc. from that object, and use it when you create an object to let a ForeignKey refer to that user.

If you for example use the default User model [Django-doc] , then you can access attributes like request.user.first_name , request.user.last_name , request.user.username , etc.