authentication.py

Authentication

OAuthAuthentication

This authentication uses OAuth 1.0a authentication scheme. OAuth 1.0a provides signature validation which provides a reasonable level of security over plain non-HTTPS connections. However, it may also be considered more complicated than OAuth2, as it requires clients to sign their requests.

This authentication class depends on the django-oauth-plus and oauth2 packages. In order to make it work you must install these packages and add oauth_provider to your INSTALLED_APPS:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...
    `oauth_provider`,
)

Don't forget to run syncdb once you've added the package.

python manage.py syncdb

Getting started with django-oauth-plus

The OAuthAuthentication class only provides token verification and signature validation for requests. It doesn't provide authorization flow for your clients. You still need to implement your own views for accessing and authorizing tokens.

The django-oauth-plus package provides simple foundation for classic 'three-legged' oauth flow. Please refer to the documentation for more details.

OAuth2Authentication

This authentication uses OAuth 2.0 authentication scheme. OAuth2 is more simple to work with than OAuth1, and provides much better security than simple token authentication. It is an unauthenticated scheme, and requires you to use an HTTPS connection.

This authentication class depends on the django-oauth2-provider project. In order to make it work you must install this package and add provider and provider.oauth2 to your INSTALLED_APPS:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...
    'provider',
    'provider.oauth2',
)

Then add OAuth2Authentication to your global DEFAULT_AUTHENTICATION setting:

'DEFAULT_AUTHENTICATION_CLASSES': (
    'rest_framework.authentication.OAuth2Authentication',
),

You must also include the following in your root urls.py module:

url(r'^oauth2/', include('provider.oauth2.urls', namespace='oauth2')),

Note that the namespace='oauth2' argument is required.

Finally, sync your database.

python manage.py syncdb
python manage.py migrate

Note: If you use OAuth2Authentication in production you must ensure that your API is only available over https.

Getting started with django-oauth2-provider

The OAuth2Authentication class only provides token verification for requests. It doesn't provide authorization flow for your clients.

The OAuth 2 authorization flow is taken care by the django-oauth2-provider dependency. A walkthrough is given here, but for more details you should refer to the documentation.

To get started:

1. Create a client

You can create a client, either through the shell, or by using the Django admin.

Go to the admin panel and create a new Provider.Client entry. It will create the client_id and client_secret properties for you.

2. Request an access token

To request an access token, submit a POST request to the url /oauth2/access_token with the following fields:

client_id the client id you've just configured at the previous step.
client_secret again configured at the previous step.
username the username with which you want to log in.
password well, that speaks for itself.

You can use the command line to test that your local configuration is working:

curl -X POST -d "client_id=YOUR_CLIENT_ID&client_secret=YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET&grant_type=password&username=YOUR_USERNAME&password=YOUR_PASSWORD" http://localhost:8000/oauth2/access_token/

You should get a response that looks something like this:

{"access_token": "<your-access-token>", "scope": "read", "expires_in": 86399, "refresh_token": "<your-refresh-token>"}

3. Access the API

The only thing needed to make the OAuth2Authentication class work is to insert the access_token you've received in the Authorization request header.

The command line to test the authentication looks like:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer <your-access-token>" http://localhost:8000/api/