diff options
| author | Tom Christie | 2012-10-30 14:32:31 +0000 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Tom Christie | 2012-10-30 14:32:31 +0000 |
| commit | 9b30dab4f772f67a626e176dc4fae0a3ef9c2c81 (patch) | |
| tree | ca138abf4792f58ffa28684f784f201ee1eef6d7 /docs/api-guide/authentication.md | |
| parent | 7e5b1501b5cede61a9391fb1a751d2ebcdb37031 (diff) | |
| parent | 4e7805cb24d73e7f706318b5e5a27e3f9ba39d14 (diff) | |
| download | django-rest-framework-9b30dab4f772f67a626e176dc4fae0a3ef9c2c81.tar.bz2 | |
Merge branch 'restframework2' into rest-framework-2-merge2.0.0
Conflicts:
.gitignore
.travis.yml
AUTHORS
README.rst
djangorestframework/mixins.py
djangorestframework/renderers.py
djangorestframework/resources.py
djangorestframework/serializer.py
djangorestframework/templates/djangorestframework/base.html
djangorestframework/templates/djangorestframework/login.html
djangorestframework/templatetags/add_query_param.py
djangorestframework/tests/accept.py
djangorestframework/tests/authentication.py
djangorestframework/tests/content.py
djangorestframework/tests/reverse.py
djangorestframework/tests/serializer.py
djangorestframework/views.py
docs/examples.rst
docs/examples/blogpost.rst
docs/examples/modelviews.rst
docs/examples/objectstore.rst
docs/examples/permissions.rst
docs/examples/pygments.rst
docs/examples/views.rst
docs/howto/alternativeframeworks.rst
docs/howto/mixin.rst
docs/howto/reverse.rst
docs/howto/usingurllib2.rst
docs/index.rst
docs/topics/release-notes.md
examples/sandbox/views.py
rest_framework/__init__.py
rest_framework/compat.py
rest_framework/utils/breadcrumbs.py
setup.py
Diffstat (limited to 'docs/api-guide/authentication.md')
| -rw-r--r-- | docs/api-guide/authentication.md | 126 |
1 files changed, 126 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/docs/api-guide/authentication.md b/docs/api-guide/authentication.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..889d16c0 --- /dev/null +++ b/docs/api-guide/authentication.md @@ -0,0 +1,126 @@ +<a class="github" href="authentication.py"></a> + +# Authentication + +> Auth needs to be pluggable. +> +> — Jacob Kaplan-Moss, ["REST worst practices"][cite] + +Authentication is the mechanism of associating an incoming request with a set of identifying credentials, such as the user the request came from, or the token that it was signed with. The [permission] and [throttling] policies can then use those credentials to determine if the request should be permitted. + +REST framework provides a number of authentication policies out of the box, and also allows you to implement custom policies. + +Authentication will run the first time either the `request.user` or `request.auth` properties are accessed, and determines how those properties are initialized. + +The `request.user` property will typically be set to an instance of the `contrib.auth` package's `User` class. + +The `request.auth` property is used for any additional authentication information, for example, it may be used to represent an authentication token that the request was signed with. + +## How authentication is determined + +The authentication policy is always defined as a list of classes. REST framework will attempt to authenticate with each class in the list, and will set `request.user` and `request.auth` using the return value of the first class that successfully authenticates. + +If no class authenticates, `request.user` will be set to an instance of `django.contrib.auth.models.AnonymousUser`, and `request.auth` will be set to `None`. + +The value of `request.user` and `request.auth` for unauthenticated requests can be modified using the `UNAUTHENTICATED_USER` and `UNAUTHENTICATED_TOKEN` settings. + +## Setting the authentication policy + +The default authentication policy may be set globally, using the `DEFAULT_AUTHENTICATION_CLASSES` setting. For example. + + REST_FRAMEWORK = { + 'DEFAULT_AUTHENTICATION_CLASSES': ( + 'rest_framework.authentication.UserBasicAuthentication', + 'rest_framework.authentication.SessionAuthentication', + ) + } + +You can also set the authentication policy on a per-view basis, using the `APIView` class based views. + + class ExampleView(APIView): + authentication_classes = (SessionAuthentication, UserBasicAuthentication) + permission_classes = (IsAuthenticated,) + + def get(self, request, format=None): + content = { + 'user': unicode(request.user), # `django.contrib.auth.User` instance. + 'auth': unicode(request.auth), # None + } + return Response(content) + +Or, if you're using the `@api_view` decorator with function based views. + + @api_view(['GET']) + @authentication_classes((SessionAuthentication, UserBasicAuthentication)) + @permissions_classes((IsAuthenticated,)) + def example_view(request, format=None): + content = { + 'user': unicode(request.user), # `django.contrib.auth.User` instance. + 'auth': unicode(request.auth), # None + } + return Response(content) + +# API Reference + +## BasicAuthentication + +This policy uses [HTTP Basic Authentication][basicauth], signed against a user's username and password. Basic authentication is generally only appropriate for testing. + +If successfully authenticated, `BasicAuthentication` provides the following credentials. + +* `request.user` will be a `django.contrib.auth.models.User` instance. +* `request.auth` will be `None`. + +**Note:** If you use `BasicAuthentication` in production you must ensure that your API is only available over `https` only. You should also ensure that your API clients will always re-request the username and password at login, and will never store those details to persistent storage. + +## TokenAuthentication + +This policy uses a simple token-based HTTP Authentication scheme. Token authentication is appropriate for client-server setups, such as native desktop and mobile clients. + +To use the `TokenAuthentication` policy, include `rest_framework.authtoken` in your `INSTALLED_APPS` setting. + +You'll also need to create tokens for your users. + + from rest_framework.authtoken.models import Token + + token = Token.objects.create(user=...) + print token.key + +For clients to authenticate, the token key should be included in the `Authorization` HTTP header. The key should be prefixed by the string literal "Token", with whitespace separating the two strings. For example: + + Authorization: Token 9944b09199c62bcf9418ad846dd0e4bbdfc6ee4b + +If successfully authenticated, `TokenAuthentication` provides the following credentials. + +* `request.user` will be a `django.contrib.auth.models.User` instance. +* `request.auth` will be a `rest_framework.tokenauth.models.BasicToken` instance. + +**Note:** If you use `TokenAuthentication` in production you must ensure that your API is only available over `https` only. + +## OAuthAuthentication + +This policy uses the [OAuth 2.0][oauth] protocol to authenticate requests. OAuth is appropriate for server-server setups, such as when you want to allow a third-party service to access your API on a user's behalf. + +If successfully authenticated, `OAuthAuthentication` provides the following credentials. + +* `request.user` will be a `django.contrib.auth.models.User` instance. +* `request.auth` will be a `rest_framework.models.OAuthToken` instance. + +## SessionAuthentication + +This policy uses Django's default session backend for authentication. Session authentication is appropriate for AJAX clients that are running in the same session context as your website. + +If successfully authenticated, `SessionAuthentication` provides the following credentials. + +* `request.user` will be a `django.contrib.auth.models.User` instance. +* `request.auth` will be `None`. + +# Custom authentication + +To implement a custom authentication policy, subclass `BaseAuthentication` and override the `.authenticate(self, request)` method. The method should return a two-tuple of `(user, auth)` if authentication succeeds, or `None` otherwise. + +[cite]: http://jacobian.org/writing/rest-worst-practices/ +[basicauth]: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2617 +[oauth]: http://oauth.net/2/ +[permission]: permissions.md +[throttling]: throttling.md |
