PermissionRequiredMixin - where do you find the "permission codename"?

Using Django Getting Started
1

Background: Trying to apply permission checks to CBVs using the PermissionRequiredMixin.

In the Django docs, it says:

Just like the has_perm() method, permission names take the form "<app label>.<permission codename>" (i.e. polls.add_choice for a permission on a model in the polls application).

Where do you find the <permission codename> part of this?

I have not established any custom permissions, however I see in the Django admin that there are already permissions related to all of the models I created. I don’t see “codenames” but for each permission there is text that goes “ABCapplabel | XYZmodelname | Can view XYZmodelname” etc. Are the permission codenames these four:

  • add
  • change
  • delete
  • view

then an underscore and then the model name? Like this?

  • ABCapplabel.add_XYZmodelname
  • ABCapplabel.change_XYZmodelname
  • ABCapplabel.delete_XYZmodelname
  • ABCapplabel.view_XYZmodelname
2

You’re close, the model names used are lower-case. But that is the pattern for the defaults created by migrations when models are added to Django.

You can see the codenames directly, it’s a field in the Permission model.

Also see

3

Got it, thanks! For this:

I tried to do this by:

  • going to the terminal with my virtual environment
  • entering python3
  • entering from django.contrib.auth.models import Permission - note: I did this thinking that after importing this, I would enter something like print(Permission.ABCapplabel.xyzmodelname.codename.all()
  • But I received a traceback before that saying this:

>>> from django.contrib.auth.models import Permission
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “”, line 1, in
File “/Users/stephaniegoulet/Desktop/ProjectA/.venv/lib/python3.10/site-packages/django/contrib/auth/models.py”, line 3, in
from django.contrib.auth.base_user import AbstractBaseUser, BaseUserManager
File “/Users/stephaniegoulet/Desktop/ProjectA/.venv/lib/python3.10/site-packages/django/contrib/auth/base_user.py”, line 49, in
class AbstractBaseUser(models.Model):
File “/Users/stephaniegoulet/Desktop/ProjectA/.venv/lib/python3.10/site-packages/django/db/models/base.py”, line 127, in new
app_config = apps.get_containing_app_config(module)
File “/Users/stephaniegoulet/Desktop/ProjectA/.venv/lib/python3.10/site-packages/django/apps/registry.py”, line 260, in get_containing_app_config
self.check_apps_ready()
File “/Users/stephaniegoulet/Desktop/ProjectA/.venv/lib/python3.10/site-packages/django/apps/registry.py”, line 137, in check_apps_ready
settings.INSTALLED_APPS
File “/Users/stephaniegoulet/Desktop/ProjectA/.venv/lib/python3.10/site-packages/django/conf/init.py”, line 87, in getattr
self._setup(name)
File “/Users/stephaniegoulet/Desktop/ProjectA/.venv/lib/python3.10/site-packages/django/conf/init.py”, line 67, in _setup
raise ImproperlyConfigured(
django.core.exceptions.ImproperlyConfigured: Requested setting INSTALLED_APPS, but settings are not configured. You must either define the environment variable DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE or call settings.configure() before accessing settings.

Since the traceback talks about INSTALLED_APPS, I then tried to make a new .py file and added

from django.contrib.auth.models import Permission

print(permission.ABCapplabel.xyzmodelname.codename.all()

but then realized that I don’t know how I’d make the print statement run from the file.

Can you please point me in the right direction on how to see the codename directly?

4

In the shell, you can get all the permissions as:
permissions = Permission.objects.all()

You can then do something like:

for perm in permissions:
  print(perm.name, "\t---\t", str(perm.content_type), "\t---\t", perm.codename)

(It’s just another model. You would work with it in exactly the same way that you work with any models you create.)

1 Like
5

I’m still unsure about what to do about the traceback received (see prior post) when I try to import the Permission model using this line in the shell: from django.contrib.auth.models import Permission

Otherwise, that makes a lot more sense; thank you!

6

You don’t run Python directly, you need to use the manage.py shell command.

7

Thanks so much, Ken.

For reference: This related video was also helpful to me: Using the Django Shell to Explore One-to-Many Models