Question: OK, so I have an Item class that has a many-to-many attribute to User through a 'Roles' class. I am trying to create a django-table for the Items such that out of any of the roles attached to the item, if the current User is attached to that role, the name of the role displays. I hope that makes some sort of sense. Here's what I have so far, which I didn't really expect to work because I don't see how the Table class can know about the request/user. I'm stuck.

models.py

```
class Item(models.Model):
    name    = models.CharField(max_length=255)
    owner   = models.ForeignKey(User, related_name='Owner')
    roles   = models.ManyToManyField(User, through='Role')
class Role(models.Model):
    role_type   = models.ForeignKey(RoleType)
    user        = models.ForeignKey(User)
    item        = models.ForeignKey(Item)

```

tables.py

```
class OwnedTable(tables.Table):
    roles = tables.Column()
    user = request.user
    def render_roles(self):
        for role in roles:
            if role.User == user:
                return role.role_type
            else:
                pass

    class Meta:
        model = Item
        attrs = {"class": "paleblue"}

        fields = ('id', 'name', 'owner', 'roles')

```

Answer: 
You can get the `request` object from `self.context`. So if you only need `request.user`, that's one way to do it.

```
class OwnedTable(tables.Table):
    roles = tables.Column(empty_values=())

    def render_roles(self):
        user = self.context["request"].user
        ...

```

Otherwise, @mariodev's solution works.
It seems like there's no way of using auth user without some overriding.

You can override `__init__` for our table class like this:

```
class OwnedTable(tables.Table):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        self.user = kwargs.pop('user', None)
        super(OwnedTable, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

```

then, inside view, you call table with `user` argument, like so

```
table = OwnedTable(Person.objects.all(), user=request.user)

```

now you can use `self.user` inside `render_roles` method to refer to the currently logged in user.