Databrowse has to be one of the most underappreciated Django apps. It’s been included with Django since 1.0, and it’s really simple to use; just register some models to a site, point to that site from your URLconf and you get a fully-featured data browser for free. You can read the databrowse docs here, but there’s something they don’t mention which I think is really nifty.

Down at the bottom of that page, it recommends using the login_required() decorator to restrict access to registered users, like so:

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *
from django.contrib import databrowse
from django.contrib.auth.decorators import login_required

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^databrowse/(.*)$', login_required(databrowse.site.root)),
    (r'^login/$', 'django.contrib.auth.views.login'),
)

But if you want to restrict access to staff (i.e. users who can access the admin), you’ll have to use another (undocumented) decorator instead.

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *
from django.contrib import databrowse
from django.contrib.admin.views.decorators import staff_member_required

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^databrowse/(.*)$', staff_member_required(databrowse.site.root)),
)

Only users with the is_staff flag will be able to access databrowse now, and the login form presented is essentially that of the Django admin. Note that django.contrib.admin must be in your INSTALLED_APPS for this to work.