Django Admin adding permission to staff user doesn't work

Question

I'm building a system where I need super admin can create groups and set different set of permissions for different groups.

Let's say I'm building a Library management system

I have extended my django User model and created a custom django user named LibraryUser.

class LibraryUser(AbstractBaseUser):
    groups = models.ManyToManyField(Group, verbose_name=_('groups'),blank=True,
        related_name="tmp_user_set", related_query_name="user")
    user_permissions = models.ManyToManyField(Permission,
        verbose_name=_('user permissions'), blank=True,
        related_name="tmp_user_set", related_query_name="user")
    # username = models.CharField(_('username'), max_length=30, unique=True,
    #     validators=[
    #         validators.RegexValidator(re.compile('^[\w.@+-]+$'), _('Enter a valid username.'), _('invalid'))
    #     ])
    first_name = models.CharField(_('first name'), max_length=30, blank=True, null=True)
    last_name = models.CharField(_('last name'), max_length=30, blank=True, null=True)
    email = models.EmailField(_('email address'), max_length=255, unique=True)
    is_staff = models.BooleanField(_('staff status'), default=False)
    is_active = models.BooleanField(_('active'), default=False)
    is_superuser = models.BooleanField(_('admin'), default=False)
    date_joined = models.DateTimeField(_('date joined'), default=timezone.now)
    receive_newsletter = models.BooleanField(_('receive newsletter'), default=False)
    facebook_id = models.CharField(max_length=30, blank=True)
    activation_key = models.CharField(max_length=40, blank="True")
    reset_password_key = models.CharField(max_length=40, blank="True")
    key_expires = models.DateTimeField(default=datetime.datetime.now() + datetime.timedelta(days=1))
    is_email_verified = models.BooleanField(default=False)
    objects = LibraryUserManager()

    USERNAME_FIELD = 'email'

    class Meta:
        verbose_name = _('user')
        verbose_name_plural = _('users')

    def get_full_name(self):
        full_name = '%s %s' % (self.first_name, self.last_name)
        return full_name.strip()

    def get_short_name(self):
        return self.first_name

    def email_user(self, subject, message, from_email=None):
        send_mail(subject, message, from_email, [self.email])

    def has_perm(self, perm, obj=None):
        return self.is_superuser

    def has_module_perms(self, app_label):
        return self.is_superuser

I have LibraryUserManager extended from BaseUserManager and created a createstaffuser function which helps in creating a staff user.

class LibraryUserManager(BaseUserManager):

    def _create_user(self, email, password, is_staff, is_superuser, **extra_fields):
        now = timezone.now()
        email = self.normalize_email(email)
        user = self.model( email=email, is_staff=is_staff,
                          is_active=False, is_superuser=is_superuser, last_login=now,
                          date_joined=now, **extra_fields)
        user.set_password(password)
        user.is_active = True
        user.save(using=self._db)
        return user

    def create_user(self, email=None, password=None, **extra_fields):
        return self._create_user(email, password, False, False, **extra_fields)

    def create_staffuser(self, email=None, password=None, **extra_fields):
        user = self._create_user( email, password, True, False, **extra_fields)
        user.is_staff = True
        user.save(using=self._db)
        return user

    def create_superuser(self, email, password, **extra_fields):
        user = self._create_user( email, password, True, True, **extra_fields)
        user.is_superuser = True
        user.save(using=self._db)
        return user

    def update_user_details(self, email, first_name, last_name):
        user = User.objects.get(email=email)

        if user is not None:
            user.first_name = first_name
            user.last_name = last_name
            user.save
            return user
        return None

And I have two groups named manager and editor with curresponding permissions. So when I logged in from my superuser and set some group permissions for the other user I can see the group and corresponding permissions gets updated in their profile.

But when I log in from the staff account I'm seeing the following message

Site administration

You don't have permission to edit anything.

Please let me know if I'm missing something.

Answer 1

You've overridden has_perm, which checks if the user has the permission to edit something, to only return True if the user is a superuser. So a non-superuser will never have any permissions in the admin interface.

If that's not what you want, don't do that.