Django Rest Framework Token Authentication

@ian-clelland has already provided the correct answer. There are just a few tiny pieces that wasn't mentioned in his post, so I am going to document the full procedures (I am using Django 1.8.5 and DRF 3.2.4):

1. Do the following things BEFORE you create the superuser. Otherwise, the superuser does not get his/her token created.

2. Go to settings.py and add the following:

   INSTALLED_APPS = (
       'rest_framework',
       'rest_framework.authtoken',
       'myapp',
   )
   
   REST_FRAMEWORK = {
       'DEFAULT_PERMISSION_CLASSES': (
           'rest_framework.permissions.IsAuthenticated',
       ),
       'DEFAULT_AUTHENTICATION_CLASSES': (
           'rest_framework.authentication.TokenAuthentication',
       )
   }
   

3. Add the following code in myapp's models.py:

   from django.db.models.signals import post_save
   from django.dispatch import receiver
   from rest_framework.authtoken.models import Token
   from django.conf import settings
   
   # This code is triggered whenever a new user has been created and saved to the database
   @receiver(post_save, sender=settings.AUTH_USER_MODEL)
   def create_auth_token(sender, instance=None, created=False, **kwargs):
       if created:
           Token.objects.create(user=instance)
   

   Alternatively, if you want to be more explicit, create a file named signals.py under myapp project. Put the code above in it, then in __init__.py, write import signals

4. Open up a console window, navigate to your project dir, and enter the following command:

   python manage.py migrate
   python manage.py makemigrations
   

   Take a look in your database, a table named authtoken_token should be created with the following fields: key (this is the token value), created (the datetime it was created), user_id (a foreign key that references the auth_user table's id column)

5. create a superuser with python manage.py createsuperuser. Now, take a look at the authtoken_token table in your DB with select * from authtoken_token;, you should see a new entry has been added.

6. Using curl or a much simpler alternative httpie to test access to your api, I am using httpie:

   http GET 127.0.0.1:8000/whatever 'Authorization: Token your_token_value'
   

   That's it. From now on, for any API access, you need to include the following value in the HTTP header (pay attention to the whitespaces):

   Authorization: Token your_token_value
   

7. (Optional) DRF also provides the ability to return a user's token if you supply the username and password. All you have to do is to include the following in urls.py:

   from rest_framework.authtoken import views
   
   urlpatterns = [
       ...
       url(r'^api-token-auth/', views.obtain_auth_token),
   ]
   

   Using httpie to verify:

   http POST 127.0.0.1:8000/api-token-auth/ username='admin' password='whatever'
   

   In the return body, you should see this:

   {
       "token": "blah_blah_blah"
   }
   

That's it!

No, not in your models.py -- on the models side of things, all you need to do is include the appropriate app (rest_framework.authtoken) in your INSTALLED_APPS. That will provide a Token model which is foreign-keyed to User.

What you need to do is decide when and how those token objects should be created. In your app, does every user automatically get a token? Or only certain authorized users? Or only when they specifically request one?

If every user should always have a token, there is a snippet of code on the page you linked to that shows you how to set up a signal to create them automatically:

@receiver(post_save, sender=User)
def create_auth_token(sender, instance=None, created=False, **kwargs):
    if created:
        Token.objects.create(user=instance)

(put this in a models.py file, anywhere, and it will be registered when a Django thread starts up)

If tokens should only be created at certain times, then in your view code, you need to create and save the token at the appropriate time:

# View Pseudocode
from rest_framework.authtoken.models import Token

def token_request(request):
    if user_requested_token() and token_request_is_warranted():
        new_token = Token.objects.create(user=request.user)

Once the token is created (and saved), it will be usable for authentication.