[FIXED] Django Caching for Authenticated Users Only

Issue

Question

In Django, how can create a single cached version of a page (same for all users) that's only visible to authenticated users?

Setup

The pages I wish to cache are only available to authenticated users (they use @login_required on the view). These pages are the same for all authenticated users (e.g. no need to setup vary_on_headers based on unique users).

However, I don't want these cached pages to be visible to non-authenticated users.

What I've tried so far

• Page level cache (shows pages intended for logged in users to non-logged in users)
• Looked into using vary_on_headers, but I don't need individually cached pages for each user
• I checked out template fragment caching, but unless I'm confused, this won't meet my needs
• Substantial searching (seems that everyone wants to do the reverse)

Thanks!

Example View

@login_required
@cache_page(60 * 60)
def index(request):
    '''Display the home page'''
    return render(request, 'index.html')

settings.py (relevant portion)

# Add the below for memcache
MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES += (
    'django.middleware.cache.UpdateCacheMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.cache.FetchFromCacheMiddleware',
)

# Enable memcache
# https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/memcache#using_memcache_from_python
CACHES = {
    'default': {
        'BACKEND': 'django_pylibmc.memcached.PyLibMCCache'
    }
}

---

Solution

Based on the answer by @Tisho I solved this problem by

1. Creating a decorators.py file in my app
2. Adding the below code to it
3. Importing the function in views.py
4. Applying it as a decorator to the views I wanted to cache for logged in users only

decorators.py

from functools import wraps
from django.views.decorators.cache import cache_page
from django.utils.decorators import available_attrs


def cache_on_auth(timeout):
    def decorator(view_func):
        @wraps(view_func, assigned=available_attrs(view_func))
        def _wrapped_view(request, *args, **kwargs):
            if request.user.is_authenticated():
                return cache_page(timeout)(view_func)(request, *args, **kwargs)
            else:
                return view_func(request, *args, **kwargs)
        return _wrapped_view
    return decorator

For logged in users, it would cache the page (or serve them the cached page) for non-logged in users, it would just give them the regular view, which was decorated with @login_required and would require them to login.

Solution

The default cache_page decorator accepts a variable called key_prefix. However, it can be passed as a string parameter only. So you can write your own decorator, that will dynamically modify this prefix_key based on the is_authenticated value. Here is an example:

from django.views.decorators.cache import cache_page

def cache_on_auth(timeout):
    def decorator(view_func):
        @wraps(view_func, assigned=available_attrs(view_func))
        def _wrapped_view(request, *args, **kwargs):
            return cache_page(timeout, key_prefix="_auth_%s_" % request.user.is_authenticated())(view_func)(request, *args, **kwargs)
        return _wrapped_view
    return decorator

and then use it on the view:

@cache_on_auth(60*60)
def myview(request)

Then, the generated cache_key will look like:

cache key:   
views.decorators.cache.cache_page._auth_False_.GET.123456.123456

if the user is authenticated, and

cache key:   
views.decorators.cache.cache_page._auth_True_.GET.789012.789012

if the user is not authenticated.

Answered By - Tisho