Make bool(AnonymousUser) evaluate to false

[Linus Lewandowski]

I suggest adding __bool__() method returning False to the AnonymousUser.

This way it'll be possible to check if the user is authenticated by simply writing

if request.user:

It's a frequent source of bugs (at least for me, but probably I'm not alone) that right now this code returns True for anonymous users.

[Tim Graham]

The Django test suite passes with the change but I feel like that could have some backwards compatibility concerns. Also "explicit is better than implicit"? You could write to the DevelopersMailingList to get other opinions.

[Tim Graham]

​django-developers discussion

Closing for now as Adam's reply on the mailing list confirms my intuition: "We already have if request.user.is_authenticated and request.user.is_anonymous which are both more explicit and pythonic. Additionally all python classes, and thus instances of User atm, are by default truthy, so implementing this custom __bool__ introduces space for more subtle bugs, e.g. the result of filter([request.user]) would change."

[Suresh V.]

request.user.is_authenticated and request.user.is_anonymous

too verbose to check a boolean attribute. Totally "unpythonic".

Would you argue that if x == True is more explicit?

The fact that all tests pass should tell you something.

This is a valid enancement.