Django Hijack

django-hijack allows superusers to hijack (=login as) and work on behalf of other users without knowing their credentials.

Table of contents

• Installation
• Usage and modes
  • Hijack Button
  • Hijack over url
  • Attribute specifications
  • Notify when logged in as a hijacked user
  • Release the hijack
    • Hijack-History
  • Notify user when they were hijacked
  • Allow staff to hijack
  • Custom hijack function
  • Django 1.4 to 1.8 compatibility with django-compat
  • Custom user models
• Settings
• Signals
  • Hijacked
• TODOs, issues, planned features
• FAQ, troubleshooting and hints
  • SHOW_HIJACKUSER_IN_ADMIN not working
• Similar projects
• Contribute

Installation

To get the latest stable release from PyPi

pip install django-hijack

To get the latest commit from GitHub

pip install -e git+git://github.com/arteria/django-hijack.git#egg=hijack-master

In your settings.py add hijack to your INSTALLED_APPS and define LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...,
    'hijack',
    'compat',
)

You can specify a HIJACK_LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL and a REVERSE_HIJACK_LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL. This settings are used to redirect to a specific url after hijacking or releasing the user. Default for both is the django LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL.

HIJACK_LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL = "/profile/"  # where you want to be redirected to, after hijacking the user.
REVERSE_HIJACK_LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL = "/admin/"  # where you want to be redirected to, after releasing the user.

Add the hijack URLs to your urls.py

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    ...
    url(r'^hijack/', include('hijack.urls')),
)

To work with REMOTE_USER just place 'hijack.middleware.HijackRemoteUserMiddleware', between django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware and django.contrib.auth.middleware.RemoteUserMiddleware in settings.MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES

MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = (
    ...,
    'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware',
    'hijack.middleware.HijackRemoteUserMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.auth.middleware.RemoteUserMiddleware',
    ...,
)

Usage and modes

There are different possibilities to hijack a user and communicate with users.

Hijack using the 'Hijack Button' on the admin site

Go to Users in the admin backend and push the Hijack button to hijack a user. This is the default mode and base version of django-hijack. To disable the Hijack button on the admin site (by not registrating the HijackUserAdmin) set SHOW_HIJACKUSER_IN_ADMIN = False in your project settings. If you are using a custom user model, you will have to add support for displaying the button yourself to your own CustomUserAdmin. Simply mix in the hijack.admin.HijackUserAdminMixin, and add hijack_field to list_display.

Hijack by calling URLs in the browser's address bar

For advanced superusers, users can be hijacked directly from the address bar by typing:

• example.com/hijack/user-id
• example.com/hijack/email/email-address
• example.com/hijack/username/username

Specify which user attributes are allowed to hijack on

By default all of the above methods (user id, email and username) are allowed. If you want to allow only a subset of these you can set ALLOWED_HIJACKING_USER_ATTRIBUTES in your project settings. This will disable the other endpoints. The settings take a list of methods to allow, you can select from:

• user_id
• email
• username

NOTE: The link on the admin page will change in the order listed above. Say that you have enabled username and email then the users email will be used for the hijack link in on the admin page.

Notify superusers when working behalf of another user

This option warns the superuser when working with another user as initally logged in. To activate this option perform the following steps:

• In your base.html add {% load hijack_tags %}, {% load staticfiles %} and
• load the styles using <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="{% static 'hijack/hijack-styles.css' %}" />.
• Place {{ request|hijackNotification }} just after your opening body tag.
• In your project settings add HIJACK_NOTIFY_ADMIN = True. The default is True.
• You need to add django.core.context_processors.request to your template context processors to be able to use requests and sessions in the templates.
• Make sure that django.contrib.staticfiles is included in your INSTALLED_APPS.
• Do not forget to run python manage.py collectstatic.

Release/reverse hijack

In the visual notification for the superuser (or staff if ALLOW_STAFF_TO_HIJACKUSER is True), when working on behalf of other users, there is a link to release the hijacked user and switch back. After releasing you are redirected to LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL or to the URL defined in REVERSE_HIJACK_LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL.

REVERSE_HIJACK_LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL = '/admin/auth/user/'

The release/reverse hijack will be executed when the URL /hijack/release-hijack/ is called (or whatever is linked to the URL with name = "release_hijack").

Hijack history

If you (A) hijack a superuser (B) and then you hijack another user (C), the release will go backwards through the list of hijacked users one by one. After the first release you then are superuser (B), after the second you are superuser (A).

Notify users when they were hijacked

NOTE: This use case is not fully implemented yet!

This option allows to notify and inform users when they were hijacked by a superuser. To activate this option follow these steps:

• In your base.html add {% load hijack_tags %}, {% load staticfiles %} and
• load the styles using <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="{% static 'hijack/hijack-styles.css' %}" />.
• Place {{ request|hijackNotification }} just after your opening body tag.
• In your project settings add HIJACK_NOTIFY_USER = True. The default is False (= silent mode)
• You need to add django.core.context_processors.request to your template context processors to be able to use requests and sessions in the templates.
• Make sure that django.contrib.staticfiles is included in your INSTALLED_APPS.
• Do not forget to run python manage.py collectstatic.

Allow staff members to hijack other users

This option allows staff members to hijack other users. In your project settings set ALLOW_STAFF_TO_HIJACKUSER to True. The default is False.

Staff members are not allowed to hijack other staff members or admins/superusers.

If you want staff members to be able hijack other staff members you should set ALLOW_STAFF_TO_HIJACK_STAFF_USER to True. The default is also False.

Custom hijack function

This feature gives you fine control over the hijack permissions system. In your project settings set CUSTOM_HIJACK_HANDLER to a dotted path referencing your function.

CUSTOM_HIJACK_HANDLER = 'path.to.my_custom_can_hijack_function'

Then you can define your conditions to permit a user to hijack another one:

def my_custom_can_hijack_function(hijacker, hijacked):
    if condition:
        return True

    return False

Django 1.4 - 1.8 compatibility with django-compat

All critical imports are carried out with the compat library that gives the compatibility for django 1.4 to 1.8

Support for custom user models

django-hijack supports custom user models, all you need to do is to add the hijack button to your custom user admin.py. Import HijackUserAdminMixin from hijack admin and add hijack_field to your list_display.

# .. imports ..
from hijack.admin import HijackUserAdminMixin

class CustomUserAdmin(UserAdmin, HijackUserAdminMixin):
    # .. code ..
    list_display = ('email', 'first_name', 'last_name', 'is_staff', 'hijack_field')

Settings

All configuration settings with their default value and description

# Hijack button in admin user view; default = True
SHOW_HIJACKUSER_IN_ADMIN = True

# Notification for the admin if he is working for an other user; default = True
HIJACK_NOTIFY_ADMIN = True

# Allow staff users to hijack; default = False
ALLOW_STAFF_TO_HIJACKUSER = False

# Allow staff users to hijack other staff users; default = False
ALLOW_STAFF_TO_HIJACK_STAFF_USER = False

# Where to go when you hijack someone; default equals the LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL; which has the default '/accounts/profile/'
REVERSE_HIJACK_LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL = LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL

# Which methods of hijacking a user is allowed; default = ('user_id', 'email', 'username')
ALLOWED_HIJACKING_USER_ATTRIBUTES = ('user_id', 'email', 'username')

# Define a custom function to determine which user can hijack another user
CUSTOM_HIJACK_HANDLER = 'path.to.my_custom_can_hijack_function'

Signals

Superuser logs in

You can catch a signal when a superuser logs in as another user. Here is an example:

from django.dispatch import receiver
from signals import post_superuser_login

@receiver(post_superuser_login)
def set_superuser(sender, **kwargs):
    print "Superuser hijacked userID %s" % kwargs['user_id']

TODOs, issues and planned features

• Handle hijack using URLs on non unique email addresses.
• unset_superuser example for signals
• Store info in user's profile (see #3 comments, Use case: 'Notify users when they were hijacked', see above)
• "got it" Link in notification to remove notification and flag from session. This is useful if hijack is used to switch between users and HIJACK_NOTIFY_ADMIN is True.
• Support for named URLs for the hijack button.
• Handle signals in release_hijack(..), currently the signals are only triggered in login_user(..) and logout_user(..).
• Graceful support for custom user models that do not feature username / email

FAQ, troubleshooting and hints

Why does the hijack button not show up in the admin site, even if I set SHOW_HIJACKUSER_IN_ADMIN = True in my project settings?

If your UserAdmin object is already registered in the admin site through another app (here is an example of a Facebook profile, https://github.com/philippeowagner/django_facebook_oauth/blob/master/facebook/admin.py#L8), you could disable the registration of django-hijack by settings SHOW_HIJACKUSER_IN_ADMIN = False in your project settings.

Afterwards create a new UserAdmin class derived from HijackUserAdmin. The Facebook example would look like this:

from django.contrib import admin
from django.contrib.auth.admin import UserAdmin
from django.contrib.auth.models import User

from hijack.admin import HijackUserAdmin

from .models import FacebookProfile

# We want to display our facebook profile, not the default user's profile
admin.site.unregister(User)

class FacebookProfileInline(admin.StackedInline):
    model = FacebookProfile

class FacebookProfileAdmin(HijackUserAdmin):
    inlines = [FacebookProfileInline]

admin.site.register(User, FacebookProfileAdmin)

Similar projects

Similar projects can be found and compared in the user-switching or the support gird of djangopackages.

Contribute

If you want to contribute to this project, simply send us a pull request. Thanks. :)