How to register users in Django REST framework?

Question

I'm coding a REST API with Django REST framework. The API will be the backend of a social mobile app. After following the tutorial, I can serialise all my models and I am able to create new resources and update them.

I'm using AuthToken for authentication.

My question is:

Once I have the /users resource, I want the app user to be able to register. So, is it better to have a separate resource like /register or allow anonymous users to POST to /users a new resource?

Also, some guidance about permissions would be great.

Answer 1

I typically treat the User view just like any other API endpoint that required authorization, except I just override the view class's permission set with my own for POST (aka create). I typically use this pattern:

from django.contrib.auth import get_user_model
from rest_framework import viewsets
from rest_framework.permissions import AllowAny


class UserViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
    queryset = get_user_model().objects
    serializer_class = UserSerializer

    def get_permissions(self):
        if self.request.method == 'POST':
            self.permission_classes = (AllowAny,)

        return super(UserViewSet, self).get_permissions()

For good measure, here is the serializer I typically use with it:

class UserSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):

    class Meta:
        model = get_user_model()
        fields = (
            'id',
            'username',
            'password',
            'email',
            ...,
        )
        extra_kwargs = {
            'password': {'write_only': True},
        }

    def create(self, validated_data):
        user = get_user_model().objects.create_user(**validated_data)
        return user

    def update(self, instance, validated_data):
        if 'password' in validated_data:
            password = validated_data.pop('password')
            instance.set_password(password)
        return super(UserSerializer, self).update(instance, validated_data)

djangorestframework 3.3.x / Django 1.8.x

Answer 2

All of the answers so far create the user, then update the user's password. This results in an two DB writes. To avoid an extra unnecessary DB write, set the user's password before saving it:

from rest_framework.serializers import ModelSerializer

class UserSerializer(ModelSerializer):

    class Meta:
        model = User

    def create(self, validated_data):
        user = User(**validated_data)
        # Hash the user's password.
        user.set_password(validated_data['password'])
        user.save()
        return user