No mention of secret_key in docs, and UserMixin

[stemid]

Make sure these boxes are checked before submitting your issue--thank you!

• Ensure you are using the latest PyPI release.
• Read the CHANGES document thoroughly.
• Provide a clear and simple set of steps to reproduce your issue for others.

The docs need to be made a bit clearer. I struggled for a long time before I realized that UserMixin is required in my User model. Even though I provided all those attributes and the get_id method that are mentioned in the docs myself.

It wasn't until I made my User model inherit from UserMixin and removed my own versions of those attributes that it started working.

And then I noticed I was missing secret_key because that isn't mentioned in the docs at all, the github README is much better than the docs but I didn't know that. The link to the docs is the first thing I clicked on.

[davidism]

The docs mention what methods are required and that UserMixin provides these. https://flask-login.readthedocs.io/en/latest/#your-user-class It's not required though, your methods should have worked assuming you implemented all the required ones.

SECRET_KEY isn't mentioned, but if you try to use the session without setting it Flask will tell you exactly what's wrong. It's also not required since you can do authentication without the session, although admittedly the session is the most common setup.

[alanhamlett]

Yep, @davidism is right on both counts.

@stemid closing this issue, but we love pull requests for docs improvements keeping in mind they should make the docs more clear, concise, and not too verbose 😄

[stemid]

I just realized that my mistake might have been to require a db.commit to set those attributes. I should have made them actual properties and called commit in the setter. That's probably why flask-login could never set any of them.

But the secret_key being implied is still wrong imo because people use flask-login to simplify flask login. Assuming they already know about flask session is wrong.

[alanhamlett]

Assuming they already know about flask session is wrong.

Re-opening until docs explain dependency on Flask's secret key being set.

[alanhamlett]

Docs added with #417, closing this issue.