Djaptcha

Djaptcha is a Django plugin that implements the captcha python package by lepture. It is designed to store user sessions in the database and generate random captcha images based on these sessions.

Installation

If you haven't already, pip install captcha and then use the following to install djaptcha:

pip install djaptcha

Now add djaptcha to the list of installed plugins in your Django app.

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    'djaptcha',
    ...
]

Note: You must have sessions enabled and configured in your django app to use this plugin (by default they are enabled in Django). You also must have configured a database. End users must have cookies enabled in their browser to be able to generate captcha images.

Finally, run python manage.py make_migrations and python manage.py migrate to create the djaptcha database models.

Settings

It's recommended that you change the following settings to suit your specific project needs:

# These are the default values
DJAPTCHA_MAX_TRIES = 10 # Maximum amount of tries before user can't generate new captchas
DJAPTCHA_LENGTH = 6 # Length of the captcha (example: 'F7W8MG' has a length of 6)
DJAPTCHA_CHARACTERS = 'ABCEFGHJKLMNPRSTUVWXYZ' # Characters allowed in the captcha
# The following two settings require you to set STATIC_URL and STATICFILES_DIRS in your settings.
DJAPTCHA_URL = STATIC_URL + 'captcha/' # The URL that end users can access captcha images at
DJAPTCHA_DIR = 'static/captcha/' # The local directory your captcha images should be stored in
DJAPTCHA_EXPIRY = 5 # Length in minutes before the captcha and image are deleted
DJAPTCHA_COOKIES_TEMPLATE = 'djaptcha/cookies.html' # The template that tells users to enable cookies

Usage

To add a captcha field to your form you need to follow these steps:

1. Add the CaptchaMixin to your View class. CaptchaMixin should be on the far left to ensure it's methods have priority

from djaptcha.views import CaptchaMixin

class MyView(CaptchaMixin, FormView):
    form_class = MyForm
    # View logic here

2. Add the CaptchaForm to your Form class. Inside this class is where you can add the CaptchaField and CaptchaAnswerField form fields to your form. CaptchaForm should be on the far left to ensure the captcha is validated before any other data.

from djaptcha.forms import CaptchaForm
from djaptcha.fields import CaptchaField, CaptchaAnswerField

class MyForm(CaptchaForm, Form):
    # Form fields and logic here.
    captcha = CaptchaField()
    answer = CaptchaAnswerField()

3. Djaptcha also provides some context variables to use in your views. You can use them like so in your form templates:

<!--
    captcha_refresh_link : a path to the url that will refresh the captcha image
    captcha_retries : the number of retries the user has left
-->
<form method="post">
    {% csrf_token %}
    {{ form.as_p }}
    <p><a href="{{ captcha_refresh_link }}">Refresh</a></p>
    <p>{{ captcha_retries }} retries left.</p>
    <button type="submit">Submit</button>
</form>

4. Optional - Create a custom cookies template. When a user tries to view a form with a Captcha in it, they will be redirected to an error page (default: 'djaptcha/cookies.html').

# settings.py
DJAPTCHA_COOKIES_TEMPLATE = 'custom/cookies.html'

<!-- templates/custom/cookies.html -->
<p>Please enable cookies! 🍪</p>