A Django app for managing CAS and custom user authentication.
Project description
django-uniauth
django-uniauth
is an app for allowing authentication through services commonly used by universities, such as CAS, while also permitting custom authentication schemes. This approach allows developers to leverage the user data contained within university databases, without strictly tethering themselves to those services. It also allows educational software to have a drop-in authentication solution utilizing the single-sign-on mechanisms of universities, typically CAS, to avoid requiring students to create an additional username or password.
The app was designed to replace key features of the built-in django.contrib.auth
package. Developers may simply replace the appropriate backends and URLs and let Uniauth handle authentication entirely if they wish. However, the app is also fully customizable, and components may be swapped with compatible replacements if desired.
Features
- Supports Python 2.7, 3.5+
- Supports Django 1.11, 2.x, 3.x, 4.x
- Supports using a custom User model
- Supports using email addresses as the "username" field
- Users can link multiple email addresses and use any for authentication
- Supports CAS authentication and Single Sign On
- Multiple CAS servers can be configured and users may use any for authentication
Major Updates
- 1.4.0: Added support for custom JWT token serializers
- 1.3.1: Added support for Django 4.x and newer Python versions
- 1.3.0: Added JWT Support
- 1.2.0: Uniauth
UserProfile
model now backreferenced from the DjangoUser
model viauser.uniauth_profile
instead ofuser.profile
.
Tutorials
- How to add CAS authentication with Uniauth: link
Table of Contents
- Installation
- Email Setup
- Settings
- Users in Uniauth
- Models
- Backends
- Commands
- Views
- Template Customization
- URLs
- User Migration
- Using JWT Authentication
- Demo Application
- Acknowledgements
Installation
Install using pip:
pip install django-uniauth
Add 'uniauth' to your INSTALLED_APPS
setting:
INSTALLED_APPS = [
...
uniauth,
]
Add the desired Uniauth authentication backends. For example:
AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS = [
'uniauth.backends.LinkedEmailBackend',
'uniauth.backends.CASBackend',
]
Include the uniauth
URLS in your urls.py
:
urlpatterns = [
...
path('accounts/', include('uniauth.urls', namespace='uniauth')),
]
Lastly, add your desired institution CAS server(s). For example:
python manage.py add_institution "Example Institution" https://cas.example.edu/
See the commands section for more information regarding adding and removing institution CAS servers.
Email Setup
Uniauth will send emails to users when necessary, such as to verify email addresses or for resetting passwords. During development, it may be sufficient to log these emails to the console - this is accomplished by adding the following to settings.py
:
EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.console.EmailBackend'
On production, a real email backend should be properly set up. See the docs on setting up an SMTP backend for more information.
Settings
Uniauth uses the following settings from the django.contrib.auth
package:
LOGIN_URL
: Determines where to redirect the user for login, particularly when using the@login_required
decorator. Defaults to/accounts/login/
.PASSWORD_RESET_TIMEOUT_DAYS
: Determines how long password reset and email verification links are valid after being generated. Defaults to3
.
The following custom settings are also used:
UNIAUTH_ALLOW_SHARED_EMAILS
: Whether to allow a single email address to be linked to multiple profiles. Primary email addresses (the value set in the user'semail
field) must be unique regardless. Defaults toTrue
.UNIAUTH_ALLOW_STANDALONE_ACCOUNTS
: Whether to allow users to log in via an Institution Account (such as via CAS) without linking it to a Uniauth profile first. If set toFalse
, users will be required to create or link a profile to their Institution Accounts before being able to access views protected by the@login_required
decorator. Defaults toTrue
.UNIAUTH_FROM_EMAIL
: Determines the "from" email address when Uniauth sends an email, such as for email verification or password resets. Defaults touniauth@example.com
.UNIAUTH_LOGIN_DISPLAY_STANDARD
: Whether the email address / password form is shown on thelogin
view. IfFalse
, the form, "Create an Account" link, and "Forgot Password" link are hidden, and POST requests for the view will be ignored. Defaults toTrue
.UNIAUTH_LOGIN_DISPLAY_CAS
: Whether the option to sign in via CAS is shown on thelogin
view. IfTrue
, there must be at least oneInstitution
in the database to log into. Also, at least one ofUNIAUTH_LOGIN_DISPLAY_STANDARD
orUNIAUTH_LOGIN_DISPLAY_CAS
must beTrue
. Violating either of these constraints will result in anImproperlyConfigured
Exception. Defaults toTrue
.UNIAUTH_LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL
: Where to redirect the user after logging in, if no next URL is provided. Defaults to/
.UNIAUTH_LOGOUT_REDIRECT_URL
: Where to redirect the user after logging out, if no next URL is provided. If this setting isNone
, and a next URL is not provided, the logout template is rendered instead. Defaults toNone
.UNIAUTH_LOGOUT_CAS_COMPLETELY
: Whether to log the user out of CAS on logout if the user originally logged in via CAS. Defaults toFalse
.UNIAUTH_MAX_LINKED_EMAILS
: The maximum number of emails a user can link to their profile. If this value is less than or equal to 0, there is no limit to the number of linked emails. Defaults to 20.UNIAUTH_PERFORM_RECURSIVE_MERGING
: Whether to attempt to recursively merge One-to-One fields when merging users due to linking two existing accounts together. IfFalse
, One-to-One fields for the user being linked in will be deleted if the primary user has a non-null value for that field. Defaults toTrue
.UNIAUTH_USE_JWT_AUTH
: In a REST API + UI split architecture, set toTrue
to save JWTrefresh
andaccess
tokens in session cookie on the domain of the API. Tokens will then be retrievable by UI viaGET
request to/jwt-tokens/
. Defaults toFalse
.
Users in Uniauth
Uniauth supports any custom User model, so long as the model has username
and email
fields. The email
serves as the primary identifying field within Uniauth, with the username
being set to an arbitrary unique value to support packages that require it. Once a user's profile has been activated, other apps are free to change the username
without disrupting Uniauth's behavior.
Users are created by either completing the Sign Up form, or logging in via an InstitutionAccount
. In the former case, they are given a username beginning with tmp-
, followed by a unique suffix, and an empty email
field. When the first email for a user has been verified, their profile is considered fully activated, the email
field is set to the verified email, and the username
field is arbitrarily set to that email address as well, unless it is taken. In the latter case, they are given a username describing how they were authenticated, along with the institution they signed into and their ID for that institution. They will keep this username and have an empty email
field until they link their account to a verified Uniauth profile.
Users may have multiple email addresses linked to their profile, any of which may be used for authentication (if one of the LinkedEmail
Uniauth backends are used), or for password reset. The address set in the user's email
field is considered the "primary email", and is the only one that must be unique across all users. Users may change which linked email is their primary email address at any point via the settings
page, so long as that primary email is not taken by another user.
Users may also have multiple InstitutionAccounts
linked to their profile. These represent alternative ways of logging in, other than the standard username/email + password form. For example, if a University offers authentication via CAS, a user may link their CAS username for that university to their Uniauth profile, so that logging in with CAS authenticates them as the proper user.
Models
Uniauth has the following models:
UserProfile:
This model is automatically attached to each User upon creation, and extends the User model with the extra data Uniauth requires. The other Uniauth models all interact with the UserProfile
model rather than the User model directly. Accessible via user.uniauth_profile
.
get_display_id
: This method returns a more display-friendly ID for the user, using their username. If the User was created via CAS authentication, it will return their username without the institution prefix (so a User with username "cas-exampleinst-id123" would return "id123"). If their username is an email address, it will return everything before the "@" symbol (so "johndoe@example.com" would become "johndoe"). Otherwise the username is returned unmodified. These generated IDs are not guaranteed to be unique.
LinkedEmail:
Represents an email address linked to a User's account. Accessible via user.uniauth_profile.linked_emails
.
Institution:
Represents an organization possesing an authentication server that can be logged into. You will need to add an Institution for each CAS server you wish to support. The add_institution
and remove_institution
commands are provided to help with this.
InstitutionAccount:
Represents an account a User holds with a particular Institution. Accessible via user.uniauth_profile.accounts
.
Backends
To use Uniauth as intended, either the LinkedEmailBackend
or the UsernameOrLinkedEmailBackend
should be included in your AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS
setting, along with the backends for any other authentication methods you wish to support.
CASBackend:
The CASBackend
is inspired from the django-cas-ng backend
of the same name, and is largely a streamlined version of that class, modified to support multiple CAS servers. This backend's authenticate
method accepts an institution
, a ticket
, and a service
URL to redirect to on successful authentication, and attempts to verify that ticket with the institution's CAS server.
If verification succeeds, it looks for an InstitutionAccount
matching that CAS username, and returns the user for the associated profile. If it succeeds, but there is no such InstitutionAccount
, a temporary user is created, and the client will eventually be prompted to link this username to an existing Uniauth profile, or create one. If verification fails, authentication fails as well.
LinkedEmailBackend:
This backend's authenticate
method accepts an email and password as keyword arguments, and checks the password against all users with that email linked to their account. If an email
is not explicitly provided, a few other common field names (such as email_address
and username
) are checked and used if found.
Note: Since the default Django admin page uses same Authentication Backends as the rest of the site, replacing the default ModelBackend
with this one will result in usernames no longer being recognized on the admin login screen. You will need to log in with a superuser's email address and password, or use the below UsernameOrLinkedEmailBackend
instead.
UsernameOrLinkedEmailBackend:
Identical to the above class, except the provided email
argument is also checked against each user's username
.
Commands
Uniauth provides the following management commands:
add_institution <name> <cas_server_url>
: Adds anInstitution
with the provided name and CAS server URL to the database. Thename
will be the text displayed in the CAS server dropdown on the Login page, andcas_server_url
must point to the root URL of a CAS protocol compliant service. The command will return the institution's slug created from the provided name; this slug must be used when referring to the institution in other commands (such asremove_institution
).- Example Usage:
python manage.py add_institution "Example Inst" "https://www.example.com/cas/"
- You may add the
--update-existing
option to update the CAS server URL of an existing institution with that name, or create one if it does not exist.
- Example Usage:
remove_institution <slug>
: Removes theInstitution
with the provided slug from the database. This action removes anyInstitutionAccounts
for that instiutiton in the process.migrate_cas <slug>
: Migrates a project originally using CAS for authentication to using Uniauth. See the User Migration section for more information.migrate_custom
: Migrates a project originally using custom User authentication to using Uniauth. See the User Migration section for more information.flush_tmp_users [days]
: Deletes temporary users more than the specified number of days old from the database. The default number of days is 1.
Views
The five views you will likely care about the most are login
, logout
, signup
, password-reset
, and settings
:
/login/
: Displays a page allowing users to log in by entering a username/email and password, or via a supported backend, such as CAS. Also displays links for creating an account directly, and for resetting passwords./logout/
: Logs out the user. The behavior and redirect location of the log out is determined by the app's settings./signup/
: Prompts user for a primary email address, and a password, then sends a verification email to that address to activate the account./password-reset/
: Prompts user for an email address, then sends an email to that address containing a link for resetting the password. If no users have the entered email address linked to their account, no email is sent. If multiple users have that address linked, an email is sent for each potential user./settings/
: Allows users to perform account related actions, such as link more email addresses, choose the primary email address, link more Institution Accounts, or change their password./jwt-tokens/
: In REST API + UI split, allows UI to pop JWT tokens from session cookie on API domain via methodGET
. Returns404
status if refresh and access tokens are not set.
The remaining views are used internally by Uniauth, and should not be linked to from outside the app:
/cas-login/
: If a user chooses to log in via CAS, this view is called with the institution the user wishes to log into as an argument. The view will first redirect to the institution's CAS server and attempt to get a ticket, then return to the original page and attempt to authenticate with that ticket, via theCASBackend
./link-to-account/
: If the user is logged into anInstitutionAccount
not yet linked to a Uniauth profile, this view offers them the choice between linking it to an existing profile, or creating a new one, and linking it to that upon activation./link-from-account/
: If the user is logged into an activated Uniauth profile, this view gives them the opportunity to log into an institution via a supported backend, then link thatInstitutionAccount
to the current profile./verify-token/
: Intermediate page used during the email verification process. Verifies the token contained within the link sent to the email address./password-reset-*/
: Intermediate pages used during the password reset process. Are nearly identical to the built-in password reset views provided by thedjango.contrib.auth
package.
Uniauth also implements its own version of the @login_required
decorator, which ensure the user is logged in with an activated Uniauth profile before accessing the view. It may be used identically to the built-in @login_required
decorator, and should be added to your own views in place of the default version.
Template Customization
The presentation of the views can be easily changed by overriding the appropriate template(s). For example, to add your own stylesheet to the Uniauth templates, create a uniauth
folder in your templates
directory, and add a base-site.html
file to override the default one like so:
{% extends "uniauth/base.html" %}
{% load static from staticfiles %}
{% block shared-head %}
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="{% static 'uniauth/img/favicon.ico' %}"/>
<link href="{% static 'path/to/custom-style.css' %}" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
{% endblock %}
{% block body %}
<div id="wrapper">
<div id="page-wrapper" class="lavender-bg">
<div id="content-wrapper">
<div id="top-background"></div>
{% block content %}
{% endblock %}
</div>
</div>
</div>
{% endblock %}
More specific changes can be made by overriding the appropriate template.
URLs
To add the Uniauth views to your app, you must add an entry to your urlpatterns
which includes them with the namespace "uniauth". For example:
path('accounts/', include('uniauth.urls', namespace='uniauth'))
Including the uniauth.urls
module will add all of Uniauth's views to your app. However, if you only wish to use CAS authentication, you may choose to include the uniauth.urls.cas_only
module instead, which will only expose the login
, cas-login
, and logout
views.
URL Parameters
All views except /settings/
persist URL parameters to their final destination. This means you can add a query string to the login
URL, and have it apply to the UNIAUTH_LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL
page, for example.
The only URL parameter that is not preserved is the next
variable, which indicates the desired location to redirect to after business in the current view is completed. This variable is consumed upon successful redirection to that location, and can be used to dynamically control how the app behaves after visiting a view.
User Migration
If you wish to use Uniauth with a project that already has users, a UserProfile
(and, if applicable, LinkedEmail
or InstitutionAccount
) will need to be created for each existing user. You may use one of the provided commands to assist with this, provided your project meets one of the following conditions:
- If you were previously using CAS for authentication, and the username for each user matches the CAS ID (as would be the case if you were using a package like django-cas-ng), you should first add an Institution for the CAS server you were using, then use the
migrate_cas
command with the slug of the created Institution to peform the migration. AUserProfile
will be created for all users, and the usernames of all Users will be changed to conform to Uniauth's expectations (tocas-<institution_slug>-<original_username>
). To get the original username (without the CAS institution prefix), use theget_display_id
method provided by theUserProfile
model. - If you were previously using custom user authentication (as in, Users would sign up with a username / email address and password), you may use the
migrate_custom
command to migrate the users. AUserProfile
will be created for each migrated user, and a verifiedLinkedEmail
will also be created for all users with a non-blankemail
field. Note that any users lacking a username / email or password will not be migrated. Also note that if theLinkedEmailBackend
is used, users that don't have aLinkedEmail
created will not be able to log in until one is linked.
If your project does not fit either of these conditions, you will need to manually migrate the users as appropiate. Please create a UserProfile
for each user, and LinkedEmails
or InstitutionAccounts
as appropiate.
Using JWT Authentication
If you wish to use django-uniauth with JWT authentication (API + UI split), you will need to enable SessionMiddleware in addition to the following settings:
UNIAUTH_USE_JWT_AUTH
explicitly set toTrue
.UNIAUTH_LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL
set to any route of your choice to your UI (ex:http://your-ui-domain.com/
)UNIAUTH_LOGOUT_REDIRECT_URL
set to any route of your choice to your UI (ex:http://your-ui-domain.com/
)
Additionally, you may need the django-cors-headers package to allow your UI to make requests with your API. From this package, you will need
CORS_ALLOWED_ORIGINS
=["http://you-ui-domain.com/"]
CORS_ALLOW_CREDENTIALS
=True
On the UI, you can link your login/signup buttons to the respective django-uniauth views. Upon logging in, Uniauth will save your JWT tokens in a session cookie on the API's domain. To retrieve and save these tokens, make a GET
request with credentials: "include"
in the request headers.
If you have created a TokenObtainPairSerializer subclass for customizing token claims, set the TOKEN_OBTAIN_SERIALIZER
simplejwt setting accordingly, and Uniauth will use the custom serializer for its JWT tokens as well.
Please refer to django-rest-framework-simplejwt for more information on customizing tokens (i.e. token expiration) and more.
Demo Application
The source repository contains a demo_app
directory which demonstrates how to setup a simple Django app to use Uniauth. This app has no functionality, and exists solely to show off the installable uniauth
app. A quick-start guide for integrating Uniauth can be found here.
Acknowledgements
Special thank you to Jérémie Lumbroso for his guidance in developing this package.
Project details
Release history Release notifications | RSS feed
Download files
Download the file for your platform. If you're not sure which to choose, learn more about installing packages.
Source Distribution
Built Distribution
Hashes for django_uniauth-1.4.1-py2-none-any.whl
Algorithm | Hash digest | |
---|---|---|
SHA256 | 630d5a61a8a398cdfe93d8c9194fda061df5a0ea448e2f6886079231d39b398e |
|
MD5 | c7c08a1f375a7ce4c0e346c095d9f695 |
|
BLAKE2b-256 | 8cdc671d4de305ae13f8c5e484c8960e1a524b9cc393e9a9d0ec8fd2ad742a1d |