Datapunt Django Authorization

Django middleware that adds functionality to check authorization, based on JSON Web Tokens.

Unlike many Django OAuth2/OIDC libraries, this middleware does NOT interact with Django User objects. It only validates the JSON Web Token, and exposes its scopes in the request object. This allows backends to operate based on the token scope.

Install

Install the Django middleware:

pip install datapunt-authorization-django

Add authorization_django.authorization_middleware to the list of middlewares in settings.py, and configure either a JWKS as json or an url to a JWKS.

MIDDLEWARE = (
   ...
   'authorization_django.middleware.AuthorizationMiddleware',
)

The old-style of using authorization_django.authorization_middleware is still supported, but no longer recommended.

Settings

The following settings are used by the middleware, and can be configured in your settings.py in the DATAPUNT_AUTHZ dictionary.

The possible values for CHECK_CLAIMS are the RFC 7519 defined claims. The relevant values are:

• iss (str issuer): Identifies the principal that issued the token.
• aud (str/list audience): Identifies the intended audience. This can be a list too.

Usage

Scope notation

Beware of the scope notation! All scopes that are read from the token are converted using scope.upper().replace("_", "/").

All scopes are transformed to uppercase, and underscores _ are replaced by slashes /. So a scope read_only in keycloak should be defined as READ/ONLY in the settings.

The middleware provides different ways to add authorization to the application:

Define a minimal scope that is required for access

With the MIN_SCOPE setting you can define a tuple of scopes that are required to access the application. An exception is made for the routes defined in FORCED_ANONYMOUS_ROUTES, which is basically a whitelist, and for the OPTIONS method, which is always allowed. It is also allowed to configure a single scope as a string.

# Require 'EMPLOYEE' scope for access, except for /status route
'MIN_SCOPE': 'EMPLOYEE'
'FORCED_ANONYMOUS_ROUTES': '/status'

or e.g.

# Require 'EMPLOYEE' and 'HR' scope for access
'MIN_SCOPE': ('EMPLOYEE', 'HR')

Define protected routes

With the PROTECTED setting you can define routes that require certain scopes for access. A distinction can be made between HTTP methods. An exception is made for the OPTIONS method, which is always allowed.

# Require 'EMPLOYEE' scope for access to /api/secure route
'PROTECTED': [
  ('/api/secure', ['*'], ['EMPLOYEE'])
]

# Require 'EMPLOYEE' scope for read access to /private route
# Require 'ADMIN' scope for write access to /private route
'PROTECTED': [
  ('/private', ['GET', 'HEAD'], ['EMPLOYEE'])
  ('/private', ['POST', 'PUT', 'PATCH', 'DELETE'], ['ADMIN'])
]

Note: the FORCED_ANONYMOUS_ROUTES setting takes precedence over the routes defined in PROTECTED, so if a route in PROTECTED starts with a route set in FORCED_ANONYMOUS_ROUTES, this will lead to a ProtectedRouteConflictError

A method to check for authorization is added to the request object

It will add a callable request.is_authorized_for(scope) that can tell you whether the current request is authorized for the given scope:

if request.is_authorized_for('ADMIN'):
  ...  # do admin things
elif request.is_authorized_for('EMPLOYEE'):
  ...  # do employee level things
else:
  ...  # only the public stuff

Django REST Framework Extensions

To enforce JWT authentication for REST views, add the following code. This will also update the generated OpenAPI specification when drf-spectacular is used in the project.

from rest_framework.views import APIView
from authorization_django.extensions.drf import JWTAuthentication


class CustomAPIView(APIView):
    authentication_classes = [JWTAuthentication]

Or configure this globally:

REST_FRAMEWORK = {
    "DEFAULT_AUTHENTICATION_CLASSES": [
        "authorization_django.extensions.drf.JWTAuthentication",
    ],
}

Additional token-scopes can also be verified for specific view:

from rest_framework.views import APIView
from authorization_django.extensions.drf import HasTokenScopes


class CustomAPIView(APIView):
    permission_classes = [HasTokenScopes("extra-scope1", "extra-scope2")]

Contribute

Create a uv-managed environment, install the project with the optional development dependencies, and start coding:

uv sync --extra extended

Testing:

make test

Doing a release

(This is for authorization_django developers.)

We use GitHub pull requests. If your PR should produce a new release of authorization_django, make sure one of the commits 1) increments the version number in pyproject.toml appropriately and 2) adds a description of the release to the changelog below in this README. Then,

1. Merge the commit in GitHub, after review;
2. Pull the code from GitHub and merge it into the master branch: git checkout main && git fetch origin && git merge --ff-only origin/main
3. Tag the release vX.Y.Z with git tag -a vX.Y.Z -m "Bump to vX.Y.Z"
4. Push the tag to GitHub with git push origin --tags
5. The publish-to-pypi-workflow will automatically publish the release

Changelog

• v2.2.0
  • Update toolchain to use uv.
  • Added failunder for test coverage.
• v2.1.1
  • Bump packages.
• v2.1.0
  • Add account_id from the user to the request.
• v2.0.4
  • Bump packages.
• v2.0.3
  • Bump packages.
• v2.0.2
  • Ensure thread safety by encapsulating jwks logic in wrapper class.
• v2.0.1
  • Fix allow custom responses and preserve original responses
• v2.0.0
  • Allow for custom (JSON) response after raised exception instead of direct 4** response.
• v1.8.0
  • Add support for apps that use both Entra ID and Keycloak
• v1.7.0
  • Support Python 3.13 and 3.14
• v1.6.2
  • Add appid to Entra token claims
• v1.6.1
  • Fix reading subject claim for Entra ID SPN tokens.
• v1.6.0
  • Added claim checking using CHECK_CLAIMS, and enforce it for Microsoft Entra ID.
• v1.5.0
  • Add authentication class for django rest framework and drf-spectacular
• v1.4.0
  • Support Microsoft Entra ID token structure
  • Added JWKS_URLS setting to authenticate against multiple backends
• v1.3.3
  • Bump jwcrypto requirement to 1.4.2
• v1.3.2
  • Stopped logging entire Authorization headers in case of a parse error
• v1.3.1
  • Extended support for Microsoft Azure AD JWT Token structure
  • Improved tests for Expired token logic
• v1.3.0
  • Support Microsoft Azure AD JWT Token structure
• v1.2.0:
  • expose claims via get_token_claims
  • Expose scopes via get_token_scopes
  • Fix SyntaxWarning in middleware
• v1.1.0
  • Add option to require authorization for specific routes
  • Fix MIN_SCOPE as tuple bug
• v1.0.0
  • By default do not allow symmetric signing algoritms
• v0.3.1
  • Bugfix for token with empty scopes claim
  • Lowered version requirement for requests module
• v0.3
  • Use jwcrypto module to verify tokens
  • Add support to load JWKS from public url
  • Remove support for custom logger settings
• v0.2.3
  • Settings are now grouped in settings.py (see Settings section above)
  • Middleware now creates audit logs