set_password functionality outside of the User model

[kent@…]

Today I wanted to use a hashed, salted password in a custom model. Instead of reinventing the wheel or looking for it in other places, I tried to use the Django implementation from contrib.auth. Checking a password was fine as django.contrib.auth.models.check_password is not tied to the User model, but creating it was harder as set_password is a method on the
User model. I had to choose between copying the implementation from set_password or calling set_password on a throwaway User object.

Perhaps the salt-and-hash action from set_password could be placed in a separate public, documented function (make_password? hash_password?) that set_password then uses?

[Łukasz Rekucki]

You don't have to create a User model. If your custom model also has a password field, you can just use:

x = MyModel()
User.set_password(x, "foo")

Alternatively, you can user an anonymous object:

salt_and_hash = User.set_password(object(), "foo").password

If the later is too cumbersome for you, just copy those 2 lines from User model.

[Alex Gaynor]

No, you really can't use that:

>>> class A(object):
...     def m(self):
...        return 3
... 
>>> class B(object):
...     pass
... 
>>> A.m(B())
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: unbound method m() must be called with A instance as first argument (got B instance instead)
>>> 

[Łukasz Rekucki]

Actually, you can... in Python 3. Sorry for the confusion.

[Adrian Holovaty]

I would fully support separating this out into a module-level function. It doesn't feel right to have it in models.py, so let's make a utils.py with that function in there. Can somebody make a patch?

[Łukasz Rekucki]

I'll try to redeem myself ;)

[Yeago]

Creation of a utils.py

[Łukasz Rekucki]

Patch with docs and tests. Also can also view & comment this on github: ​http://github.com/lqc/django/commit/246059c9b1da777974ad9d804989a2fb912208f1

[patchhammer]

patch_ticket14390.diff fails to apply cleanly on to trunk

[Jannis Leidel]

In [16456]:

Fixed #14390 and #16262 -- Moved password related functions from auth models to utils module and stopped check_password from throwing an exception. Thanks, subsume and lrekucki.