'AnonymousUser' object has no attribute 'backend' customuser

Question

I am using django 1.7 python 3.4 I have created a custom MyUser class which is derived from AbstractBaseUser. Now, when I try to register a user, I am getting the error 'AnonymousUser' object has no attribute 'backend'. views.py

def signup(request):
    if request.method == 'POST':
        form = SignupForm(request.POST)
        if not form.is_valid():
            return "form invalid"  # render(request, 'auth/signup.html', {'form': form})
        else:

            email = form.cleaned_data.get('email')
            enterprise = form.cleaned_data.get('enterprise')
            first_name = form.cleaned_data.get('first_name')
            last_name = form.cleaned_data.get('last_name')
            password = form.cleaned_data.get('password')
            MyUser.objects.create_myuser(email=email, enterprise=enterprise, first_name=first_name, last_name=last_name,
                                         password=password,)
            myuser = authenticate(email=email, password=password)
            # myuser.backend = 'django.contrib.auth.backends.ModelBackend'
            # authenticate(email=email, password=password)
            login(request, myuser)
            welcome_post = u'{0}from {1} has joined the network.'.format(myuser.first_name, myuser.enterprise)
            node = Node(myuser=myuser, post=welcome_post)
            node.save()
            return redirect('/')
    else:
        return render(request, 'accounts/signup.html', {'form': SignupForm()})

Also, the user is not getting saved into database.

Traceback:
File "C:\Python34\lib\site-packages\django\core\handlers\base.py" in get_response
  111.                     response = wrapped_callback(request, *callback_args, **callback_kwargs)
File "C:\Users\sp\ilog_dev\accounts\views.py" in signup
  27.             login(request, myuser)
File "C:\Python34\lib\site-packages\django\contrib\auth\__init__.py" in login
  98.     request.session[BACKEND_SESSION_KEY] = user.backend
File "C:\Python34\lib\site-packages\django\utils\functional.py" in inner
  225.         return func(self._wrapped, *args)

Exception Type: AttributeError at /accounts/signup/
Exception Value: 'AnonymousUser' object has no attribute 'backend'

models.py

class MyUserManager(BaseUserManager):
    def create_myuser(self, email, first_name, last_name, enterprise, password=None):
        if not email:
            raise ValueError('Users must have an email address')
        if not first_name:
            raise ValueError("must have a first_name")
        if enterprise not in Enterprise.objects.all():
            raise ValueError("please specify a valid enterprise or register a new one")

        myuser = self.model(email=self.normalize_email(email), first_name=first_name,
                            last_name=last_name, enterprise=enterprise,)

        myuser.set_password(password)
        myuser.save()  # using=self._db
        print("user saved")

        return myuser

I suspect authenticate fails and returns None, in which case login will fall back to request.user which is an AnonymousUser without a backend attribute. — knbk
Also the user is not getting saved to the database. So evenif it tries to authenticate, what will it authenticate.? P.S: I am new to django and web development — sprksh
MyUser.objects.create_myuser can you post the code in this method? — knbk

Rohit Rohit · Accepted Answer · 2016-05-07T04:26:17

The problem is quite simple. The User is not being saved into the database. As you say, there must be some problem with the save method in your user model. Also, the save method has no bug that stops it but it is working fine as a piece of code except saving the object

So what happens is when you signup as a user, everything runs fine, but the user is not saved. After that it tries to call back the user and it returns anonymous user. Now when you call any attribute of the user, it will raise a similar error.

Check your save method.

'AnonymousUser' object has no attribute 'backend' customuser

2 Answers