auth.get_user_model()

get_user_model() [source]

Instead of referring to User directly, you should reference the user model using django.contrib.auth.get_user_model(). This method will return the currently active User model – the custom User model if one is specified, or User otherwise.

When you define a foreign key or many-to-many relations to the User model, you should specify the custom model using the AUTH_USER_MODEL setting. For example:

from django.conf import settings
from django.db import models

class Article(models.Model):
    author = models.ForeignKey(
        settings.AUTH_USER_MODEL,
        on_delete=models.CASCADE,
    )

When connecting to signals sent by the User model, you should specify the custom model using the AUTH_USER_MODEL setting. For example:

from django.conf import settings
from django.db.models.signals import post_save

def post_save_receiver(sender, instance, created, **kwargs):
    pass

post_save.connect(post_save_receiver, sender=settings.AUTH_USER_MODEL)

Generally speaking, you should reference the User model with the AUTH_USER_MODEL setting in code that is executed at import time. get_user_model() only works once Django has imported all models.