Django 3 Python 3.8 whitenoise not serving request.user

Question

I get the error

'WSGIRequest' object has no attribute 'user'

When writing:

x.user = request.user
x.save()

In Django, I updated whitenoise to the latest version and I'm pretty sure that a post request would have the user attached. How do I return the request.user from the post request in Django?

Some of my settings:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    'django_admin_bootstrapped',
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    'contacts',
    'pytz',
    'registration',
    'crispy_forms',
    'storages',
    'el_pagination',
    'django.contrib.sitemaps',
)

MIDDLEWARE = [
    'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware',
]

MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = [
    'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware',
    'whitenoise.middleware.WhiteNoiseMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.auth.middleware.SessionAuthenticationMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.clickjacking.XFrameOptionsMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.security.SecurityMiddleware',
]

TEMPLATE_LOADERS = (
    'django.template.loaders.filesystem.Loader',
    'django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader',
#     'django.template.loaders.eggs.Loader',
)
TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS = (
    'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
    'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',
    'django.core.context_processors.request',
)

Answer 1

Following the whitenoise docs : Edit your settings.py file and add WhiteNoise to the MIDDLEWARE list, above all other middleware apart from Django’s SecurityMiddleware

For example:

MIDDLEWARE = [
    'django.middleware.security.SecurityMiddleware',
    'whitenoise.middleware.WhiteNoiseMiddleware',
    ...

Answer 2

I had to insert django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware into the middleware to get the method from HttpRequest.user https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.0/ref/request-response/#attributes-set-by-middleware

MIDDLEWARE = [
    'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware',
]

MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = [
    'django.middleware.security.SecurityMiddleware',
    'whitenoise.middleware.WhiteNoiseMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.auth.middleware.SessionAuthenticationMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.clickjacking.XFrameOptionsMiddleware',

]