Develop Reference

Flask - User to Profile Relationships

I'm working with Flask-restplus and I am at a point where I would like to associate each User in my user model to a type of profile, where each user can be associated with one or many profile types. I'm wondering how you guys would go about this. So far, here's what I'm thinking/planning to do. NOTE: I'm not very experienced in web development, so there's a chance I don't know the best way to accomplish this.
Step 1: Create a one-to-many (clients need to also be employees, see below) field (profile_types) relating to a static table that just lists all possible profile options. EXAMPLE:
PK PROFILE TYPE
1 provider
2 employee
3 client
.....
The idea here is to track different information and allow for different views/endpoints for users who are tied to certain profile types. Example, employees would provide a valid login authentication and be directed to page A while a client would be directed to page B, etc. We're also planning on collecting different data points within each profile model.
So an instance of a user might look like this, user1.profile == [client, employee'].
NOTE: This is more important for data collection (ie age of employee, start date, etc) than it is for creating directives based on permissions.
Step 2: Upon creating the new user, a signal fires off the creation of a profile based on the profile_types supplied to the user instance. I've used signals with django in the past, is there a signal library for Flask?
Step 3: An empty profile instance(s) now exists for that user. It will be up to a superuser to upload data in bulk or manually fill out profile information.
Is this a sensible way to go about this? My other though is to create a bunch of Boolean fields in the User model is_provider, is_employee, is_client, etc. All fields that are True get assigned a profile instance. What's the best way to go about this?
Thanks everyone!

Seeing that are you try to validate multiple profile types, you may use
if user.profile_type in ['employee', 'client']
Now, if you want to add an super user I think you can use this
if user.profile_type in ['employee', 'client'] and user.profile_type == 'superuser'
Now, you relationship is more like 'many-to-many', because you are saying that an client also needs to be an employee, if you mean that some endpoints needs to be accessible for employees and clients, then you need to use a 'many-to-one' relationship (an Stackoverflow question which explains what is that)
For your instances, there is Flask Marshmallow, which has an amazing compatibility with Flask SQLAlchemy if you are using an database, but Flask Marshmallow can work alone.

How to storage objects for communication without the database in Django?

I'm working on a project where i do need to do a communication in 3 parts. Let me explain:
1.- The user fills a form, which is used to create a set of objects from the models. This objects are not saved in the database on this moment. All the objects are related between them.
2.- This objects must be saved in some way for an admin user to check the data and decide if proceed to save it, or if any element is invalid and reject the form.
3.- If the admin decide that the data is correct, select an option to send a .save() to add the data to the database.
At least that's the idea i have on how should work. I decided to create the objects before send it to the admin because it sounded easier to show that if i sended the request.POST and the request.FILES. My problem is that i don't know where could save the objects to show it to the admin when he connects(There are 2 types of users, Normal and Admin, the normal are the ones that fill the forms, the admins only check it, the two of them has their own views). So, does anyone how could i send the data and storage it until the admin connects? I'm open to any idea if this is not possible, the only thing that is necesary is the flow of: User fills the form, admin check it, data is saved or rejected.

You will want to save() them when the user submits the form at the start. Add a BooleanField to your model that says whether the row has been moderated and accepted. Then in your application, filter out all non-moderated rows, and on the admin side, filter out only rows that need moderation.

Django best user model design

Probably some of you would tell that is a recurrent topic, but after reading many articles, it still seems very ambiguous to me. My question is about the best way to use and to extend the User model preserving the authentication (and others) mechanisms available in Django. However, I prefer to describe my design:
There are users (Patients) that can sign up providing basic info (first name, last name, birth date, gender, email, password). Preferably, email should replace the username.
When a Patient is in the application, it can register a new Patient (imagine a member of the family), but email and password are not required because they won't log into the system.
For the first part, Django doc propose to extend User with a OneToOne relation to a Profile. However, to replace username by email they propose then to create a custom User extending from an AbstractUser, as well as an associated UserManager. The second requirement is like doing a one-to-many relation from users to users. So, according to Django, which should be the best strategy: creating a completely new user model and the one-to-many user-user adding an specific attribute that distinguish between main users and family members? OR extending Django User with a Profile and then a one-to-many relation profile-profile? Which option preserves the best the benefits of Django user authentication and model administration?
Thank you for any comment, suggestion, example.

First, if you want to use email as username, use the Django custom user functionnality. It works well.
Then, note that it's not because you created your own User that you can't extend it with a Profile.
So, a good solution could be :
Create a Django custom User without trying to add specific fields to it (the one and only purpose here is to use email to log instead of username).
Create a PatientProfile class that have a one-to-one relatioship (blank=True) with User class.
This way, a patient that can log in will be related to a User instance and will use this instance for this purpose. On the other hand, the patient who can't log in won't be related to any User instance.
In the end, there's no problem to use OneToMany relationship with PatientProfile for what's you want to do.

What are the best uses for the Django Admin app?

On the website, it says this:
One of the most powerful parts of
Django is the automatic admin
interface. It reads metadata in your
model to provide a powerful and
production-ready interface that
content producers can immediately use
to start adding content to the site.
In this document, we discuss how to
activate, use and customize Django’s
admin interface.admin interface.
So what? I still don't understand what the Admin interface is used for. Is it like a PHPMYADMIN? Why would I ever need this?

Let's say you create a model called Entry. IE an extremely simple blog. You write a view to show all the entries on the front page. Now how do you put those entries on the webpage? How do you edit them?
Enter the admin. You register your model with the admin, create a superuser and log in to your running webapp. It's there, with a fully functional interface for creating the entries.

Some of the uses I can think of -
Editing data or Adding data. If you have any sort of data entry tasks, the admin app handles it like a breeze. Django’s admin especially shines when non-technical users need to be able to enter data.
If you have understood above point, then this makes it possible for programmers to work along with designers and content producers!
Permissions - An admin interface can be used to give permissions, create groups with similar permissions, make more than one administrators etc. (i.e. if you have a login kinda site).
Inspecting data models - when I have defined a new model, I call it up in the admin and enter some dummy data.
Managing acquired data - basically what a moderator does in case of auto-generated content sites.
Block out buggy features - Also if you tweak it a little, you can create an interface wherein say some new feature you coded is buggy. You could disable it from admin interface.
Think of the power this gives in a big organization where everyone need not know programming.

Django: Using django.contrib.auth for SAAS ( Users, permissions, etc. )

I'm making a SAAS and I've been asking a slew of questions on here related to the Auth system built in. I'm having trouble understanding the "why" and "how". Primarily I don't understand how it fits in with my SAAS.
I (do) know the following:
You can do this: http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/auth/#storing-additional-information-about-users
There are many reasons to use the built in auth system (like security) instead of rolling your own
I (don't) know the following:
class MyUserProfile(models.Model):
"""
Administrator for an Account. Can edit tickets and other stuff.
"""
user = AutoOneToOneField(User, primary_key=True)
account = models.ForeignKey(Account)
dogs_name = models.CharField(max_length=255)
In the previous example, account is just what you'd expect; an entity that's paying to use my software. user is my main concern. Somebody goes to a page and creates a UserProfile with a username and password, etc. When they do this, where does the related User get created? Do I need to create it in my view manually based on the request.POST['username'], etc, and then do
myuserprof = MyUserProfile.create(user=foo_user_just_created, account=foo_account, dogs_name='Spot')
I don't know why but for some reason I feel like I'm missing something. This idea of asking somebody to sign up for an account, and then create a MyUserProfile with a form that asks for the password, username, email, et al, and then in my view creating 2 different objects (MyUserProfile and User) with different parts of the form data. I mean I shouldn't have a User form right? Like I said, I feel like I'm either skipping a step or I'm in the wrong paradigm. I'm not new to Django, but for some reason I have trouble with things that I didn't build (I think it might be a mental problem for real at this point).
Maybe there is a good example of this sort of thing being done on some open source project.
Update: Oops, forgot to mention that in the code above I tried to use AutoOneToOneField from django-annoying, but I have no idea where all the User's attributes get set or how to decide which User object to attach to it. This stuff is driving me crazy.
Also, do I need to use the sites app to do this stuff, and finally does a "super user" have all permissions to everything (I don't want people from Account "Acme" to access account "Microshaft" objects)? Or do they just have all permissions to all views?

Somebody goes to a page and creates a UserProfile with a username and password, etc.
UserProfile doesn't have an username or password field. So it should be somebody goes to a page and create an User. Then, it creates an UserProfile associated to that newly created User.
The question is, how and when do you want this UserProfile instance to be created?
Automatically, whenever a new User is created : use signals, as described in the docs
Automatically, whenever the profile is accessed from an user instance : use AutoOneToOneField, and access the profile using user.userprofile instead of user.get_profile()
Manually. But don't forget an user might have no UserProfile associated yet, so user.get_profile() might raise a DoesNotExist exception.
When they do this, where does the related User get created?
It doesn't. You have to create it explicitely.
This idea of asking somebody to sign up for an account, and then create a MyUserProfile with a form that asks for the password, username, email, et al, and then in my view creating 2 different objects (MyUserProfile and User) with different parts of the form data. I mean I shouldn't have a User form right?
Why not? You want here to create an User and his associated profile in one go, right? You could eventually use directly the POST data, or use a Form to access to the fields, or even better, use 2 ModelForm (one for User, one for UserProfile) that you will process in the same view (maybe this question can help?)
Maybe there is a good example of this sort of thing being done on some open source project.
I suggest you check out django-registration and django-profiles.
Note
You have another way of adding information to an User object, by extending the model itsel. It will allow you to put your extra fields directly in the user model and might be easier for you to understand and use.
I won't dive into details here, have a look at that tutorial for more informations.
Other questions
I tried to use AutoOneToOneField from django-annoying, but I have no idea where all the User's attributes get set or how to decide which User object to attach to it. This stuff is driving me crazy
See above on how to use it. If you feel uncomfortable with it, the best is to follow the documentation, which recommend using a ForeignKey with unique=True in user profiles.
Also, do I need to use the sites app to do this stuff
From the site framework docs : Use it if your single Django installation powers more than one site and you need to differentiate between those sites in some way.
and finally does a "super user" have all permissions to everything (I don't want people from Account "Acme" to access account "Microshaft" objects)?
Again, from the docs, Designates that this user has all permissions without explicitly assigning them. That means that everywhere Django is using the built-in permission system (e.g. default administration pages), a super-user will be authorized.
In views you're writing yourself, or if you tweak some ModelAdmin, it's up to you to decide how you are going to check permissions.