litestar-auth

litestar-auth is a production-focused authentication and authorization library for Litestar. It gives Litestar apps a native plugin for registration, login, email verification, password reset, route guards, and optional OAuth, Redis-backed features, and TOTP without forcing you to rebuild security-critical flows from scratch.

Documentation: https://zylvext.github.io/litestar-auth/

Quick peek

This is the same app.py used in the Quickstart. The quickstart page adds the SQLite table bootstrap and the register/verify/login request flow. To run this exact SQLite demo locally, install aiosqlite alongside litestar-auth.

"""Minimal Litestar auth quickstart app mirrored in docs/quickstart.md."""

from __future__ import annotations

import os
from datetime import timedelta
from typing import Any
from uuid import UUID

from litestar import Litestar, Request, get
from sqlalchemy.ext.asyncio import AsyncSession, async_sessionmaker, create_async_engine

from litestar_auth import (
    AuthenticationBackend,
    BaseUserManager,
    BearerTransport,
    LitestarAuth,
    LitestarAuthConfig,
    UserManagerSecurity,
    is_authenticated,
)
from litestar_auth.authentication.strategy import JWTStrategy
from litestar_auth.db.sqlalchemy import SQLAlchemyUserDatabase
from litestar_auth.models import User

DATABASE_URL = "sqlite+aiosqlite:///./quickstart.db"
JWT_SECRET = os.environ["LITESTAR_AUTH_JWT_SECRET"]
RESET_PASSWORD_TOKEN_SECRET = os.environ["LITESTAR_AUTH_RESET_PASSWORD_TOKEN_SECRET"]
VERIFY_TOKEN_SECRET = os.environ["LITESTAR_AUTH_VERIFY_TOKEN_SECRET"]

engine = create_async_engine(DATABASE_URL, echo=False)
session_maker = async_sessionmaker(engine, class_=AsyncSession, expire_on_commit=False)


class UserManager(BaseUserManager[User, UUID]):
    """Print verification tokens so the quickstart can finish without email infrastructure."""

    verification_tokens: dict[str, str] = {}

    async def on_after_register(self, user: User, token: str) -> None:
        self.verification_tokens[user.email] = token
        print(f"verification token for {user.email}: {token}")  # noqa: T201


@get("/protected", guards=[is_authenticated])
async def protected(request: Request[User, Any, Any]) -> dict[str, str]:
    user = request.user
    assert user is not None
    return {"email": user.email}


backend = AuthenticationBackend[User, UUID](
    name="bearer",
    transport=BearerTransport(),
    strategy=JWTStrategy[User, UUID](
        secret=JWT_SECRET,
        lifetime=timedelta(minutes=15),
        subject_decoder=UUID,
        allow_inmemory_denylist=True,
    ),
)

config = LitestarAuthConfig[User, UUID](
    backends=(backend,),
    session_maker=session_maker,
    user_model=User,
    user_manager_class=UserManager,
    user_db_factory=lambda session: SQLAlchemyUserDatabase(session, user_model=User),
    user_manager_security=UserManagerSecurity(
        verification_token_secret=VERIFY_TOKEN_SECRET,
        reset_password_token_secret=RESET_PASSWORD_TOKEN_SECRET,
    ),
    include_users=False,
)

app = Litestar(route_handlers=[protected], plugins=[LitestarAuth(config)])

Features

• Litestar-native plugin setup through LitestarAuthConfig(...) and LitestarAuth(config).
• Registration, login, email verification, password reset, and protected-route guards out of the box.
• Transport + strategy auth backends, including Bearer or Cookie transports and JWT, database, or Redis token strategies.
• Opt-in DB-backed session/device routes for listing active refresh sessions and revoking one session or all other sessions without exposing raw tokens or token digests.
• BaseUserManager hooks for integrating email delivery, background jobs, and app-specific lifecycle logic.
• Bundled SQLAlchemy user model plus SQLAlchemyUserDatabase for the default persistence path.
• Normalized flat-role contract for responses and guards, with a matching litestar roles CLI for operator workflows.
• Optional Redis denylist, rate limiting, OAuth login/account linking, and built-in TOTP support.
• Typed public APIs and docs aimed at application developers rather than framework internals.

Install

uv add litestar-auth
# or
pip install litestar-auth

For the SQLite quick peek and quickstart example, also add aiosqlite:

uv add litestar-auth aiosqlite

Install extras only when you need those features:

• litestar-auth[redis] for Redis-backed token storage, JWT denylist support, and auth rate limiting.
• litestar-auth[oauth] for OAuth flows via httpx-oauth and encrypted provider tokens.
• litestar-auth[totp] for built-in TOTP helpers.
• litestar-auth[jwt] for asymmetric RS*/ES* JWT algorithms (cryptography).
• litestar-auth[all] for redis, oauth, totp, and jwt together.

Requirements

• Python 3.12+
• Litestar ≥ 2.22
• Advanced Alchemy ≥ 1.10

See the Migration Guide for Litestar 2.22 route-parameter conventions and Advanced Alchemy 1.10 repository API changes.

Password hashing defaults are now Argon2-only. Unsupported stored password hashes fail closed under the library default, so rotate or reset those credentials before upgrading; see the Migration Guide.

Runnable examples

This repository ships small Litestar apps under examples/ (not published on PyPI). Each package documents its own environment variables; local demos typically set ..._INSECURE=1 as noted there.

Install an ASGI server (for example uvicorn), then pick a scenario from the table in examples/__init__.py.

Bearer JWT + TOTP sketch (demo_totp):

export LITESTAR_AUTH_DEMO_TOTP_INSECURE=1
uv run uvicorn examples.demo_totp.app:app --host 127.0.0.1 --port 8000
# curl http://127.0.0.1:8000/health
# curl -sS -X POST http://127.0.0.1:8000/auth/register \
#   -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
#   -d '{"email":"you@example.com","password":"choose-a-strong-password"}'

Cookie + CSRF flows (demo_cookie_jwt, demo_cookie_jwt_totp) need a client that keeps cookies and sends X-CSRF-Token on unsafe methods after loading /health.

Read more

• Quickstart: bootstrap SQLite, run the app, and walk through register/verify/login.
• Installation: requirements, extras, and typical deployment stacks.
• Configuration: user model, manager, backends, Redis, OAuth, TOTP, and security knobs.
• HTTP API: generated routes, including the opt-in DB refresh-session/device management surface.
• Security: secure defaults, migration-only flags, and production hardening notes.
• Deployment security checklist: reverse-proxy trust, cookie transport, and secrets-at-rest preconditions.
• Role management CLI: operator commands for bundled relational roles.
• Testing plugin-backed apps: AsyncTestClient patterns and repo-aligned test advice.
• Python API overview: stable imports and where advanced submodules live.

Repository

Contributor setup, verification commands, and docs tooling live in Contributing.