PyBrowserID 0.4.0

Python library for the BrowserID Protocol

This is a python client library for the BrowserID protocol:

https://browserid.org/

For the vast majority of deployments, you will simply want to call the “verify” functon to verify a given assertion:

>>> data = browserid.verify(BROWSERIDASSERTION, "http://mysite.com")
>>> print data["email"]
"[e-mail]"

The precise implementation of this function will change depending on the current recommendedations of the BrowserID team. Currently it POSTs the assertion to the remote verifier services on browserid.org.

Note that you must specify your site’s root URL as the second argument to that function. This is the “expected audience” and is a key security feature of BrowserID.

If you are not able to determine the precise hostname by which your site is being accessed (e.g. due to virtual hosting) then you may specify one or more wildcard patterns like so:

>>> data = browserid.verify(BROWSERIDASSERTION, ["http://*.mysite.com"])
>>> print data["email"]
"[e-mail]"

For finer control over the verification process, you can create an instance of a “Verifier” class and avoid having to specify the audience patterns over and over again:

>>> verifier = browserid.RemoteVerifier(["*.mysite.com"])
>>> data = verifier.verify(BROWSERIDASSERTION)
>>> print data["email"]
"[e-mail]"

For improved performance, or if you just want to live on the bleeding edge, you can explicitly perform verification locally by using the LocalVerifier class like so:

>>> verifier = browserid.LocalVerifier(["*.mysite.com"])
>>> data = verifier.verify(BROWSERIDASSERTION)
>>> print data["email"]
"[e-mail]"

Note that the details of the BrowserID Protocol are still in flux, so local verification might break due to incompatible changes. As things stabilise this will become the default implementation.

0.4.0 - 2012-03-13

• Renamed from PyVEP to PyBrowserID, in keeping with Mozilla branding.

• Audience checking now accepts glob-style patterns as well as fixed audience strings.

• Verifier objects now accept a list of audience patterns as their first argument. This is designed to encourage doing the right thing rather than, say, passing in the hostname from the request.

• Allowed LocalVerifier to use of a custom JWT parser.

• Removed browserid.verify_[remote|local|dummy] since they just cause confusion. You should either accept the defaults provided by the browserid.verify function, or use a full-blown Verifier object.

• Split certificate loading and caching into a separate class, in browserid.certificates:CertificatesManager.

• Removed the DummyVerifier class in favour of supporting functions in browserid.tests.support.