Django: Basic Auth for one view (avoid middleware)
For those that already use django-rest-framework (DRF):
DRF has a BasicAuthentication
class which, more-or-less, does what is described in the other answers (see source).
This class can also be used in "normal" Django views.
For example:
from rest_framework.authentication import BasicAuthentication
def my_view(request):
# use django-rest-framework's basic authentication to get user
user = None
user_auth_tuple = BasicAuthentication().authenticate(request)
if user_auth_tuple is not None:
user, _ = user_auth_tuple
You can try a custom decorator (as seems to be the recommended way here and here) instead of adding new middleware:
my_app/decorators.py
:
import base64
from django.http import HttpResponse
from django.contrib.auth import authenticate
from django.conf import settings
def basicauth(view):
def wrap(request, *args, **kwargs):
if 'HTTP_AUTHORIZATION' in request.META:
auth = request.META['HTTP_AUTHORIZATION'].split()
if len(auth) == 2:
if auth[0].lower() == "basic":
uname, passwd = base64.b64decode(auth[1]).decode(
"utf8"
).split(':', 1)
user = authenticate(username=uname, password=passwd)
if user is not None and user.is_active:
request.user = user
return view(request, *args, **kwargs)
response = HttpResponse()
response.status_code = 401
response['WWW-Authenticate'] = 'Basic realm="{}"'.format(
settings.BASIC_AUTH_REALM
)
return response
return wrap
Then use this to decorate your view:
from my_app.decorators import basicauth
@basicauth
def my_view(request):
...
This library could be used: https://github.com/hirokiky/django-basicauth
Basic auth utilities for Django.
The docs show how to use it:
Applying decorator to CBVs
To apply @basic_auth_requried decorator to Class Based Views, use django.utils.decorators.method_decorator.
Source: https://github.com/hirokiky/django-basicauth#applying-decorator-to-cbvs
When you do a basic auth request, you're really adding credentials into the Authorization
header. Before transit, these credentials are base64-encoded, so you need to decode them on receipt.
The following code snippet presumes that there's only one valid username and password:
import base64
def my_view(request):
auth_header = request.META.get('HTTP_AUTHORIZATION', '')
token_type, _, credentials = auth_header.partition(' ')
expected = base64.b64encode(b'username:password').decode()
if token_type != 'Basic' or credentials != expected:
return HttpResponse(status=401)
# Your authenticated code here:
...
If you wish to compare to the username and password of a User
model, try the following instead:
def my_view(request):
auth_header = request.META.get('HTTP_AUTHORIZATION', '')
token_type, _, credentials = auth_header.partition(' ')
username, password = base64.b64decode(credentials).split(':')
try:
user = User.objects.get(username=username)
except User.DoesNotExist:
return HttpResponse(status=401)
password_valid = user.check_password(password)
if token_type != 'Basic' or not password_valid:
return HttpResponse(status=401)
# Your authenticated code here:
...
Please note that this latter version is not extremely secure. At first glance, I can see that it is vulnerable to timing attacks, for example.