When working with Django 1.7.8, developers may encounter a 403 CSRF verification failed error during POST form submissions.

The error message indicates that the CSRF token is either missing or incorrect. This security feature prevents cross-site request forgery attacks.

To resolve this issue, ensure that the {% csrf_token %} template tag is included within every POST form targeting an internal URL. Here's an example of how to properly structure a form in HTML:

{% extends "base.html" %}
{% block title %}
    hello
{% endblock %}
{% block content %}
    <div class="container">

      <form class="form-signin" action="/login_webmail/" method='post'>{% csrf_token %}
        <h2 class="form-signin-heading">Please sign in</h2>
        <label class="sr-only" for="inputUserName">Email address/UserName</label>
        <input type="text" autofocus="" required="" placeholder="Email address/UserName" class="form-control" id="inputUserName" name="inputUserName">
        <label class="sr-only" for="inputPassword">Password</label>
        <input type="password" required="" placeholder="Password" class="form-control" id="inputPassword">
        <div class="checkbox">
          <label>
            <input type="checkbox" value="remember-me"> Remember me
          </label>
        </div>
        <button type="submit" class="btn btn-lg btn-primary btn-block">Sign in</button>
      </form>

    </div> <!-- /container -->

{% endblock %}

In addition to including the CSRF token in the form, it's necessary to pass the request context to the template rendeirng function. For older Django versions, this involves importing RequestContext and passing it to render_to_response():

from django.http import HttpResponse
import datetime
from django.shortcuts import render_to_response
from django.template import RequestContext


def webindex(request):
    return render_to_response('index.html', context_instance=RequestContext(request))

For handling the submitted data, define a view function like so:

def login_webmail(request):
    if 'inputUserName' in request.POST:
        message = request.POST['inputUserName']
    else:
        message = "Not inputUserName"
    return render_to_response('test_post.html', {'test_post_name': message})

However, modern Django practices recommend using the render shortcut instead of render_to_response with RequestContext. The updated approach simplifies the view function:

from django.shortcuts import render


def login_webmail(request):
    if 'inputUserName' in request.POST:
        message = request.POST['inputUserName']
    else:
        message = "Not inputUserName"
    return render(request, 'test_post.html', {'test_post_name': message})

This change eliminates the need for explicit RequestContext imports and makes the code cleaner.

The key points for successful implementation are:

1. Include {% csrf_token %} inside all POST forms.
2. Use render() instead of render_to_response() with RequestContext for newer Django versions.
3. Ensure that your project settings allow CSRF middleware to function correctly.

These adjustments should resolve most CSRF-related issues encountered when processing POST requests in Django applications.