govector-auth 0.1.6

Django authentication backends and views for Vector-generated apps

govector-auth

Django authentication backends and views for Vector-generated apps. Handles JWT verification from Vector's auth proxy, session cookie management, and dev-mode auto-authentication.

Install

pip install govector-auth

Setup

Authentication Backends

Add to your Django settings:

REST_FRAMEWORK = {
    "DEFAULT_AUTHENTICATION_CLASSES": [
        "govector_auth.JWTCookieAuthentication",
        "govector_auth.DevAutoAuthentication",
    ],
}

• JWTCookieAuthentication reads JWT from HttpOnly cookies with CSRF enforcement
• DevAutoAuthentication provides a fallback dev user when auth is not configured (when VECTOR_AUTH_PROXY_URL is not set)

URL Configuration

Add the auth views to your urls.py:

from govector_auth import AuthTokenView, TokenRefreshView, CurrentUserView, LogoutView

urlpatterns = [
    path("api/accounts/auth/token", AuthTokenView.as_view()),
    path("api/accounts/auth/refresh", TokenRefreshView.as_view()),
    path("api/accounts/me/", CurrentUserView.as_view()),
    path("api/accounts/logout/", LogoutView.as_view()),
]

Required Settings

# Cookie names
ACCESS_TOKEN_COOKIE = "access_token"
REFRESH_TOKEN_COOKIE = "refresh_token"

# Cookie config
ACCESS_TOKEN_COOKIE_MAX_AGE = 60 * 5  # 5 minutes
ACCESS_TOKEN_COOKIE_HTTPONLY = True
ACCESS_TOKEN_COOKIE_SECURE = True  # False for local dev
ACCESS_TOKEN_COOKIE_SAMESITE = "Lax"
ACCESS_TOKEN_COOKIE_PATH = "/"

REFRESH_TOKEN_COOKIE_MAX_AGE = 60 * 60 * 24 * 7  # 7 days
REFRESH_TOKEN_COOKIE_HTTPONLY = True
REFRESH_TOKEN_COOKIE_SECURE = True  # False for local dev
REFRESH_TOKEN_COOKIE_SAMESITE = "Lax"
REFRESH_TOKEN_COOKIE_PATH = "/"

Required Environment Variables

VECTOR_AUTH_PROXY_URL=https://auth.govector.ai  # Vector's hosted auth proxy
DEV_USER_EMAIL=dev@localhost                     # Fallback email when auth is disabled

User Model

Your User model should include these fields for full compatibility:

class User(AbstractBaseUser):
    email = models.EmailField(unique=True)
    first_name = models.CharField(max_length=150, blank=True)
    last_name = models.CharField(max_length=150, blank=True)
    picture = models.URLField(max_length=500, blank=True, default="")
    vector_uga_user_id = models.CharField(max_length=255, blank=True, default="")
    is_active = models.BooleanField(default=True)

    @property
    def full_name(self) -> str:
        return f"{self.first_name} {self.last_name}".strip() or self.email

Auth Flow

1. Frontend POSTs JWT from auth proxy to AuthTokenView
2. View fetches RS256 public key from VECTOR_AUTH_PROXY_URL/.well-known/jwks.json
3. Verifies JWT signature, extracts user claims
4. Creates or updates local User record
5. Issues SimpleJWT access + refresh tokens as HttpOnly cookies
6. Subsequent requests authenticated via JWTCookieAuthentication
7. TokenRefreshView rotates tokens when access token expires

API

JWTCookieAuthentication

DRF authentication backend. Reads JWT from the ACCESS_TOKEN_COOKIE cookie, falls back to Authorization header. Enforces CSRF on unsafe methods when using cookies.

DevAutoAuthentication

DRF authentication backend. When VECTOR_AUTH_PROXY_URL is not set, auto-authenticates with a shared dev user. When auth is enabled, returns None (passes through to 401).

Views

View	Method	Path	Description
AuthTokenView	POST	/api/accounts/auth/token	Exchange auth proxy JWT for session
TokenRefreshView	POST	/api/accounts/auth/refresh	Rotate refresh token
CurrentUserView	GET	/api/accounts/me/	Get current user
LogoutView	POST	/api/accounts/logout/	Clear auth cookies