login_required decorator in Django - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Using the login_required Decorator in Django

📖 Scenario: You are building a simple Django web app where some pages should only be seen by users who have logged in. To protect these pages, you will use Django's login_required decorator.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to use the login_required decorator to restrict access to a view so that only logged-in users can see it.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a Django view function named dashboard that returns a simple HTTP response.

Import and use the login_required decorator from django.contrib.auth.decorators.

Apply the login_required decorator to the dashboard view.

Add a URL pattern for the dashboard view in urls.py.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Many websites have pages that only logged-in users should see, like user dashboards, profiles, or settings. Protecting these pages is important for privacy and security.

💼 Career

Understanding how to restrict access to parts of a web app is a key skill for web developers working with Django or any web framework.

1

Create the dashboard view function

In your Django app's views.py, create a function called dashboard that takes a request parameter and returns an HttpResponse with the text "Welcome to your dashboard!". Import HttpResponse from django.http.

Django

from django.http import HttpResponse

# Create the dashboard view function
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Remember to import HttpResponse and define a function named dashboard that returns it with the welcome text.

2

Import the login_required decorator

In views.py, add an import statement to import login_required from django.contrib.auth.decorators.

Django

from django.http import HttpResponse
# Import login_required decorator
# Your code here

def dashboard(request):
    return HttpResponse("Welcome to your dashboard!")

Need a hint?

Use from django.contrib.auth.decorators import login_required to import the decorator.

3

Apply the login_required decorator to the dashboard view

Add the @login_required decorator above the dashboard function definition in views.py.

Django

from django.http import HttpResponse
from django.contrib.auth.decorators import login_required

# Add the login_required decorator here
# Your code here
def dashboard(request):
    return HttpResponse("Welcome to your dashboard!")

Need a hint?

Place @login_required directly above the dashboard function.

4

Add a URL pattern for the dashboard view

In your app's urls.py, import the dashboard view and add a URL pattern for path dashboard/ that points to the dashboard view. Import path from django.urls.

Django

from django.urls import path
from .views import dashboard

# Add the URL pattern for dashboard
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use path('dashboard/', dashboard, name='dashboard') inside urlpatterns.