Authentikate

Maintainer

What is Authentikate?

Authentikate is a library that provides a simple interface to validate tokens and retrieve corresponding user information inside a django application.

Note: This library is still somewhat tied to the Arkitekt Framework. We are working on making it more generic. If you have any ideas, please open an issue or a PR.

Alternatives

There are a few alternatives to this library, but none of them provide the same functionality. The most popular alternative is Simple JWT or Strawberry-django Auth . Both of these libraries provide a great way to authenticate users. So you should seriously consider using them instead of this library.

Why Authentikate?

Authentikate was designed to work with the Arkitekt Framework and therefore comes with a few additional features that are not available in other libraries.

Features:

Designed to work with the more specific Oauth2 Self-Encoded Access Tokens
Models Oauth2 Clients and Scopes
Build in support for Guardian for object level permissions
Build in support for Static Tokens (Token that are hard coded into the settings, e.g. for testing)
Build in support for Strawberry
Designed to work with Koherent for audit logging
Imitation support with Imitation Tokens (Token that are hard coded into the settings, e.g. for testing)

Composed Usage

If you plan to use Authentikate with the Arkitekt Framework, you should consider the Kante library. It composes Authentikate with Koherent and provides a simple interface to authenticate and log all changes that are done by a specific app and user.

How do I use it?

Authentikate is a Django Libary, so you will have to add it to your INSTALLED_APPS in your settings.py file.

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    'guardian', # This is required for object level permissions
    'authentikate',
    ...
]

AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS = [
    "django.contrib.auth.backends.ModelBackend",
    "guardian.backends.ObjectPermissionBackend", # This is required for object level permissions
]

You will also need some additional configuration in your `settings.py` file.

```python
AUTH_USER_MODEL = "authentikate.User"


AUTHENTIKATE = {
    "ISSUERS": [
        {
            "kind": "jwks_uri",
            "iss": "https://lok.my-org.com",
            "jwks_uri": "https://lok.my-org.com/.well-known/jwks.json",
            # Optional: refuse tokens lok has revoked before they expire. The
            # list is fetched at most once a minute (configurable), not per request.
            "revocation_uri": "https://lok.my-org.com/o/revoked/",
        }
    ],
    # This service's identifier, checked against the token's `aud`. Required —
    # without it a token your issuer minted for any other service would be
    # accepted here. Use "*" to accept any audience deliberately.
    "AUDIENCE": "my-service",
}

ISSUERS and AUDIENCE are the required keys. Each entry is selected by its kind (jwks_uri, jwks_dict, rsa, or rsa_file). For the full settings shape — issuers, static tokens, provenance, headers, the public API and error model — see docs/USAGE.md.

Upgrading? 4.0 renames the active_org claim to org (which now carries the organization id, not a slug) and makes AUDIENCE and the token's aud claim required. 3.0 fixed two authentication bypasses and contains breaking changes of its own (most notably: token roles are no longer mirrored onto Django Groups). See docs/UPGRADING.md.

Standard Usage

Koherent is designed to work with Strawberry, so you will need to add its extension to your schema.

from authentikate.utils import authenticate_header_or_none


def my_view(request: HttpRequest) -> None:
    auth = authenticate_header_or_none(request.headers)

    if auth:
        auth.user # This is the user that is authenticated
        auth.app # This is the app that is authenticated
        auth.scopes # These are the scopes that are authenticated

GraphQL Setup

Currently we require that you use the Kante GraphQL library, as it provides some boilerplate code that is required to make this work.

import strawberry
from authentikate.strawberry import AuthentikateExtension, AuthExtension

schema = strawberry.Schema(query=Query, extensions=[AuthentikateExtension])


@strawberry.type
class Query:

    @strawberry.field(extensions=[AuthExtension()])
    def me(self, info: Info) -> User:
        return info.context.request.user

    @strawberry.field(extensions=[AuthExtension(scopes=["read:users"])])
    def users(self, info: Info) -> List[User]:
        return User.objects.all()

AuthExtension accepts scopes, roles, any_scope_of and any_role_of. Use AuthSubscribeExtension on subscription fields.

Static Tokens

Static Tokens are tokens that are hard coded into the settings. They are useful for testing and development, but should not be used in production.

AUTHENTIKATE = {
    "ISSUERS": [
        {
            "kind": "jwks_uri",
            "iss": "https://lok.my-org.com",
            "jwks_uri": "https://lok.my-org.com/.well-known/jwks.json",
        }
    ],
    # Static tokens bypass signature verification entirely. They are for tests
    # and local development only: configuring them while DEBUG is False raises
    # ImproperlyConfigured at startup.
    "STATIC_TOKENS": {
        "my_token": {
            "sub": "my_user",
            "iss": "https://lok.my-org.com",
            "scope": "read:users",
            "roles": ["reader"],
        }
    }
}

Release files for authentikate 4.2.0

For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.

Source distribution (sdist)

Source distribution for authentikate 4.2.0
File	Size	Uploaded
authentikate-4.2.0.tar.gz	44.3 kB	Sep 26, 2026	Details

Built distribution (wheel)

Table of built distributions (wheels) for authentikate 4.2.0
File	Interpreter	ABI	Platform	Reset
authentikate-4.2.0-py3-none-any.whl 56.1 kB Sep 26, 2026	Python 3	none	any	Details

Total release size: 100.4 kB

Release files / authentikate-4.2.0.tar.gz

Download URL	authentikate-4.2.0.tar.gz
Size	44.3 kB
Tags	Source
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`08d5cdecf4dbc62c41cdf38c0cffe372ef9df12e5207211692fd0030dbc0d5c7`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`b96d7ddd154d7a4e9c6898d9339be392e3abfc637168116945c6b94f6946b91f`
Upload date	Sep 26, 2026
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	Yes
Uploaded via	`uv/0.12.19 {"installer":{"name":"uv","version":"0.12.19","subcommand":["publish"]},"python":null,"implementation":{"name":null,"version":null},"distro":{"name":"Ubuntu","version":"24.04","id":"noble","libc":null},"system":{"name":null,"release":null},"cpu":null,"openssl_version":null,"setuptools_version":null,"rustc_version":null,"ci":true}`

Release files / authentikate-4.2.0-py3-none-any.whl

Download URL	authentikate-4.2.0-py3-none-any.whl
Size	56.1 kB
Tags	Python 3
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`117cc098a640eaa6134471d106057cdd43883697c169568cdf4e7cee24c4c3ae`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`6f3c237198c9dc9dc5eccbb59bbc6faba82804d945779608fe1ded0a3415f5d0`
Upload date	Sep 26, 2026
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	Yes
Uploaded via	`uv/0.12.19 {"installer":{"name":"uv","version":"0.12.19","subcommand":["publish"]},"python":null,"implementation":{"name":null,"version":null},"distro":{"name":"Ubuntu","version":"24.04","id":"noble","libc":null},"system":{"name":null,"release":null},"cpu":null,"openssl_version":null,"setuptools_version":null,"rustc_version":null,"ci":true}`