Autofill user for a created_by type of field (not in admin)

[Craig Jones]

I know that this is a common question and I have seen many, many answers when I google about this, but I need some advice.

What I have is a field in my models called entered_by which is ForeignKey to the User model. I would like to have this filled automatically upon creation in the Admin panel *and* outside of the admin panel (regular site).  AND... I am thinking of running the site through a load balancer so as far as I understand I believe I need a thread safe method. 

I have seen answers that use the Form, others that use Middleware, and others that use a cache mechanism etc.  But I am having a hard time judging which method is simple but that would work. 

What would you recommend I do using current technology (Django 1.6 or 1.7)?

[Mike Dewhirst]

On 12/08/2014 12:40 PM, Craig Jones wrote:
> I know that this is a common question and I have seen many, many answers
> when I google about this, but I need some advice.
>
> What I have is a field in my models called entered_by which is
> ForeignKey to the User model. I would like to have this filled
> automatically upon creation in the Admin panel

This is easy ...
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.6/ref/contrib/admin/#django.contrib.admin.ModelAdmin.save_model
... but see below for a refactored way.

*and* outside of the
> admin panel (regular site). AND... I am thinking of running the site
> through a load balancer so as far as I understand I believe I need a
> thread safe method.
>
> I have seen answers that use the Form, others that use Middleware, and
> others that use a cache mechanism etc. But I am having a hard time
> judging which method is simple but that would work.

There are two cases: Database is updated exclusively via Django forms
(or your API); and database is updated independently of your code.

In the latter case, I would give up now. In the former, write a utility
method like record_user(self, request, obj, form, change) in which you
try obj.entered_by = request.user followed by obj.save() and do whatever
seems appropriate if there is an Exception. Also, you might want
'Anonymous' if there is no request.user.

Then in each admin class ...
save_model = record_user # without parens

I haven't got as far as using this in the API and other Django forms but
I'd be surprised if it couldn't be made to work there too.

I have no idea about thread safety but I believe the request is handled
in a single thread so it should be ok.

Mike

>
> What would you recommend I do using current technology (Django 1.6 or 1.7)?
>

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