Enhance Django startproject with Built-In Login, Signup, and Logout Options

I'd like to focus on Django's authentication system as documented in Django 5.1.

Django already provides robust authentication views through the django.contrib.auth module, including LoginView for handling user login. While these views are available, Django intentionally doesn't include default templates with the startproject command.

Current Authentication System

Django's LoginView handles:

• Rendering login forms (GET requests)
• Processing login submissions (POST requests)
• Redirecting after successful login

The documentation provides a sample registration/login.html template that developers can use as a starting point:

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{% extends "base.html" %}

{% block content %}

{% if form.errors %}
<p>Your username and password didn't match. Please try again.</p>
{% endif %}

{% if next %}
{% if user.is_authenticated %}
<p>Your account doesn't have access to this page. To proceed,
please login with an account that has access.</p>
{% else %}
<p>Please login to see this page.</p>
{% endif %}
{% endif %}

<form method="post" action="{% url 'login' %}">
{% csrf_token %}
<table>
<tr>
<td>{{ form.username.label_tag }}</td>
<td>{{ form.username }}</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>{{ form.password.label_tag }}</td>
<td>{{ form.password }}</td>
</tr>
</table>

<input type="submit" value="login">
<input type="hidden" name="next" value="{{ next }}">
</form>

{# Assumes you set up the password_reset view in your URLconf #}
<p><a href="{% url 'password_reset' %}">Lost password?</a></p>

{% endblock %}

Implementation Considerations

To use Django's authentication views, developers need to:

1. Include the auth URLs in their project's URLconf
2. Create the necessary templates (like registration/login.html)
3. Configure settings like LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL

The template can be customized by passing the template_name parameter:

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path("accounts/login/", auth_views.LoginView.as_view(template_name="myapp/login.html")),

Your proposal to include these templates and views in the default project setup could indeed make Django more approachable for newcomers, as it would provide working authentication functionality out of the box rather than requiring developers to implement these common patterns themselves.