CSRF verification failed. Request aborted. on django

I am following Django 1.3 Web Development. and for logins, i am getting the following error

Forbidden (403)
CSRF verification failed. Request aborted.
Help
Reason given for failure:
    CSRF token missing or incorrect.

This is my settings.py Included APPS. It is exactly how the book says it should be.

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.sites',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    # Uncomment the next line to enable the admin:
    'django.contrib.admin',
    # Uncomment the next line to enable admin documentation:
    # 'django.contrib.admindocs',
    'djangocricket.Cricket',
    'djangocricket.cms'
)

The book says, it should contain, django.contrib.auth.views.login .. and i am including it in

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    # Examples:
    url(r'^$', 'djangocricket.Cricket.views.index', name='default'),
    url(r'^user/(\w+)/$', 'djangocricket.Cricket.views.user_home', name='user home'),
    url(r'^login/$', 'django.contrib.auth.views.login'),
    # url(r'^djangocricket/', include('djangocricket.foo.urls')),

    # Uncomment the admin/doc line below to enable admin documentation:
    #url(r'^admin/doc/', include('django.contrib.admindocs.urls')),

    # Uncomment the next line to enable the admin:
    url(r'^news/', 'djangocricket.cms.views.index', name='index'),
    #url(r'^news/(?P<slug>[^\.]+).html', 'djangocricket.cms.views.detail', name='get_single_news_item'),
    url(r'^admin/', include(admin.site.urls)),
)

and my registration/login.html ... copy pasted from the book. it should do.

<html>
<head>
    <title>Django Bookmarks - User Login</title>
</head>
<h1>User Login</h1>
{% if form.errors %}
    <p>Your username and password didn't match.
        Please try again.</p>
{% endif %}
<form method="post" action=".">
    <p><label for="id_username">Username:</label>
        {{ form.username }}</p>
    <p><label for="id_password">Password:</label>
        {{ form.password }}</p>
    <input type="hidden" name="next" value="/" />
    <input type="submit" value="login" />
</form>
</body>
</html>

what am i missing?

Solution

You need to add the {% csrf_token %} template tag as a child of the form element in your Django template.

This way, the template will render a hidden element with the value set to the CSRF token. When the Django server receives the form request, Django will verify that the token matches the value that was rendered in the form. This is necessary to ensure that POST requests (i.e. data-altering requests) originate from an authentic client session.

For more info, check the Django documentation at: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/csrf/

Here is an overview of the Cross-Site Request Forgery attack: https://www.owasp.org/index.php/CSRF