Importing django.contrib.auth.urls does not play well with existing admin templates

Question

I've been trying to follow documentation on using builtin Django templates to login/logout nonstaff users on a Django (1.9) site. In particular, I modified the urlconf by adding

url('^', include('django.contrib.auth.urls'))

which brings in /login and /logout endpoints and views with default template names preprogrammed.

The default template names for login and logout are registration/login.html and registration/logged_out.html. The first one doesn't exist anywhere, so I assumed I should create a templates/registration/ and create the login template, which I did. I thought the same thing should work for the logout, except it doesn't.

What actually happens is that the template resolves to django.contrib.admin.templates.registration.logged_out.html. This is pretty but stinks because the login link points to the admin login, which no nonstaff user will be able to use.

I really wish I could use the urlconf above, use the default template names, but write my own templates. Isn't this possible? The alternative seems to be repeating a bunch of stuff and that isn't very Pythonic.

I imagine it might involve modification of the TEMPLATES setting, or changing the orders of something else in the settings.

Whatever the solution is, I hope it does not interfere with the proper resolution of the admin templates (i.e. it would be bad if those started using my new templates.)

---

Requested details:

I created a login.html in (appname)/templates/registration/, and it works just fine when visiting the login url.

I created a logged_out.html in (appname)/templates/registration/ also, but discovered that when visiting the logout url, I got the admin site logged_out template (the one that says "Thanks for spending some quality time with the Web site today."

My templates setting:

TEMPLATES = [
    {
         'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',
         'DIRS': [],
         'APP_DIRS': True,
         'OPTIONS': {
             'debug': True,
             'context_processors': [
                 'django.template.context_processors.debug',
                 'django.template.context_processors.request',
                 'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
                 'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',
             ],
         },
    },
]

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'app',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes', 
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles'
)

Project structure (omitting what I guess is nonessential, and using some generic names.)

project/
    app/
        templates/
            app/
            registration/
                login.html
                logged_out.html
        models.py
        views.py
        admin.py
    gettingstarted/
        static/
        settings.py
        urls.py

The structure may look a bit weird since it was adapted starting from the Heroku "Getting started with python" app.

Update

I finally struck upon the right search terms in the Django bug tracker and found that is a known issue. Disappointingly it's already three years old with no comment in the past two years. I guess I will just have to bite the bullet and define my own urls that use templates on a different path.

Answer 1

Django's template lookup is done top down by the order of INSTALLED_APPS. Meaning that if you want to override a template, the overriding template app should be listed above the overriden one in the admin.

In this case, project.app should be placed above django.contrib.admin so when creating /registration/logout.html it'll be loaded before the admin template.

In general, the recommended order of installed apps is: project -> 3rd party apps -> django builtins. It also affects static files finders.

---

Because of a bug in Django, overriding the registration/logged_out.html template overrides the admin "logged_out" template as well.

You can include the logout view specifically and specify a different "logged out" template or next_page (the view where it redirects after logout):

from django.contrib.auth import views as auth_views

urlpatterns = [
    url(r'^logout/$', auth_views.logout, {'next_page': '/'}, name='logout'),
    url('^', include('django.contrib.auth.urls')),
]

This will redirect to / after logout. It can also be a named url.

Or to change the logged_out template location use:

url(r'^logout/$', auth_views.logout, {'template_name': 'logged_out.html'}, name='logout'),

And then create logged_out.html in project/app/templates/.

I would use the first option if you want to redirect the user back to the home page after logout, and the 2nd if you want to display a "logged out" message.