splent_feature_auth

The auth feature of a SPLENT product line.

Accounts, login, logout and sessions. It owns the User model, the login page, the accounts screen for administrators (/admin/users), a person's own account page (/account), the login throttle and the password policy. Every SPLENT product installs it.

A SPLENT feature is a Python package that a product composes with others. Its models, routes, services, templates and hooks are registered when the product starts. What this feature provides and requires is listed in the [tool.splent.contract] section of pyproject.toml, which splent feature:contract --write keeps in sync with the source.

The login page

The login page opens three slots, so other features add to it without overriding the template. A callback takes no arguments and returns HTML, or an empty string to add nothing on this request.

A sign-in provider puts its button in auth.login.providers.

# hooks.py of a provider feature
from flask import render_template
from splent_framework.hooks.template_hooks import register_template_hook


def login_button():
    return render_template("hooks/login_button.html")


register_template_hook("auth.login.providers", login_button, order=20)

A hint reads what was typed from the request.

from flask import render_template, request


def password_hint():
    email = request.form.get("email", "")
    if not signs_in_with_a_provider(email):
        return ""
    return render_template("hooks/password_hint.html")


register_template_hook("auth.login.error_hint", password_hint)

A hint that depends on the address tells whoever types it whether an account exists there. A feature that adds one should let the product turn it off.

Menus and shells

The feature declares its entries in the framework's menu registry, and an application shell that draws menu_sections() and user_menu_sections() shows them.

A product hides or reorders them by key, without overriding a template.

[tool.splent.layout.menu]
hide = ["auth_my_account"]

The sidebar and navbar hooks (layout.anonymous_sidebar, layout.authenticated_sidebar, layout.navbar.anonymous and layout.navbar.authenticated) still draw the same entries for one minor, for the shells that draw those slots. A shell draws the registry or those slots, never both, or every entry shows twice. The next minor drops the hooks.

The login page extends shell('login'), which is AUTH_LOGIN_LAYOUT when the product names one and the application shell otherwise. My account and the accounts screen extend shell('app'), so they follow SPLENT_SHELL_APP.

Password policy

One rule for every place that sets a password. The accounts screen, My account and the create-user and set-password commands apply it, and so does any feature that sets a password and imports it. It applies when a password is set, never at login, so an account whose password predates a longer minimum keeps signing in.

The breach check sends only the first five characters of the password's SHA-1, with Add-Padding: true, and compares the suffixes that come back here. It runs last, once the length and the repeat are right, and only once per form.

No password longer than 128 characters (MAX_LENGTH) can be set, whatever the minimum. That leaves room for a passphrase or a password manager's output, and a form that sets a password never hashes a pasted megabyte.

AUTH_PASSWORD_CONFIRM adds a second box where a form would ask once. My account always asks twice. The commands ask twice whenever they prompt.

A product sets them in its own [tool.splent.config].

[tool.splent.config]
AUTH_PASSWORD_MIN_LENGTH = 12
AUTH_PASSWORD_CONFIRM = true

The API lives in splent_io.splent_feature_auth.passwords.

A form that sets a password.

from flask_babel import lazy_gettext as _l
from flask_wtf import FlaskForm
from wtforms import PasswordField
from wtforms.validators import DataRequired

from splent_io.splent_feature_auth.passwords import (
    PasswordPolicy,
    confirmation_required,
)


class SignupForm(FlaskForm):
    password = PasswordField(
        _l("Password"), validators=[DataRequired(), PasswordPolicy()]
    )
    confirm_password = PasswordField(
        _l("Repeat the password"), validators=[PasswordPolicy(repeats="password")]
    )

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super().__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        if not confirmation_required():
            del self.confirm_password

The template draws the second box only when the form still has it, with {% if form.confirm_password %}. A length error sits under the first box and a mismatch under the second. Put Optional() instead of DataRequired() on a field that may stay blank, such as a new password on an edit form.

Code that is not a form calls the helper directly.

from splent_io.splent_feature_auth.passwords import password_problem

problem = password_problem(password, request.form.get("confirm_password", ""))
if problem:
    flash(problem, "danger")

Account state

Whether an account may sign in is two facts, kept apart:

• email_verified_at, when the owner proved the address is theirs (a confirmation link, a reset link that reached it, a provider that vouches for it, or an administrator), or empty when nobody knows;
• disabled_at, when an administrator switched the account off, or empty.

User.active is computed from them, in Python and in SQL (User.query.filter_by(active=True) works): switched on, and verified when the product requires it. AUTH_REQUIRE_VERIFIED_EMAIL decides; empty, the default, requires it exactly when a feature that confirms addresses (confirmemail) is installed. Confirming an address never switches an account on.

An account created directly (User(...), the accounts screen, splent feature:auth create-user) is taken as vouched for. create_user, which public sign-up and provider sign-ins use, creates it unverified unless the caller passes email_verified=True. Assigning user.active still works as it did when it was a column: True opens the account (switched on, and verified if it was not) and False switches it off. New code calls enable(), disable() and mark_email_verified().

Every lookup by address compares email_canonical (NFKC and casefold, under utf8mb4_bin, unique), so ADA@example.com and its full-width spelling reach ada@example.com, and ádá@example.com reaches nothing. A row written past the model (an import, an INSERT) has to fill it with models.canonical_email. Use AuthenticationService.find_by_email, or UserRepository.get_by_email, rather than filtering on email.

last_login_at is stamped at every sign-in and password_changed_at at every new password.

The migration auth0004_account_state carries existing accounts over: an active one is verified (as of its creation) and switched on; an inactive one waits for its link where the product confirms addresses and is switched off where nothing could confirm it. AUTH_MIGRATION_INACTIVE_ACCOUNTS (pending or disabled) overrides that reading. It stops before touching the table when two accounts would share a canonical address, naming them. The downgrade puts active back from the two columns.

Where an account came from

account_origin says where the account was opened: local (sign-up, the accounts screen, the terminal), a provider's name (orcid, github, passed to create_user as provider or account_origin), or legacy_v2, an account a migration carried over from an older site. Accounts that predate the column have none. email_verified_via says what proved the address: confirmemail (a link), reset (a reset link reached it), admin, a provider's name, or what a migration found (legacy_reset, legacy_github). has_usable_password is false for an account whose password nobody knows, one a provider opened (create_user(..., usable_password=False), User.set_unusable_password()); setting a password anywhere makes it true. The migration auth0006_account_origin adds the three columns, with no origin and no proof for the accounts that exist, and a usable password.

Accounts carried over from an older site

An account with account_origin = "legacy_v2" and no email_verified_at (User.is_legacy_unconfirmed) signs in whatever AUTH_REQUIRE_VERIFIED_EMAIL says: the older site never confirmed an address, and keeping them out would shut out everyone whose mail does not arrive. Instead:

• its first sign-in mails the confirmation link, through the confirmation feature's send_confirmation (auth imports no such feature);
• the first page of every session asks it to confirm, and My account says so, with a button for a new link, and a badge on its menu entry;
• what would hand the account over waits for the link: User.may_act_sensitively() is false until then. The gate is decorators.verified_email_required, or confirm_email_first() inside a view. A browser is sent to /account/confirm-email, which mails a new link on request (the confirmation feature decides how often) and comes back afterwards; a JSON caller gets a 403 with {"code": "email_unconfirmed", "confirm_url": ...}.

from splent_io.splent_feature_auth.decorators import (
    confirm_email_first,
    verified_email_required,
)


@dataset_bp.route("/dataset/<int:dataset_id>/publish", methods=["POST"])
@verified_email_required
def publish(dataset_id):
    ...


# or, where only one branch is sensitive
if publishing and not current_user.may_act_sensitively():
    return confirm_email_first(json=True)

auth itself guards a new address on My account. The tokens such an account already holds keep working: the API checks a token, not its owner's address. An account opened here behaves as before: may_act_sensitively() is true once its address is confirmed, and true where the product signs in unverified accounts.

The migration that brings the accounts calls AuthenticationService.record_legacy_proof(user, proof, proved_at) for each one it can prove from the older site's data (VERIFIED_BY_LEGACY_RESET, VERIFIED_BY_LEGACY_GITHUB, with the moment of the proof). It refuses any other proof and any account that was not carried over, keeps the first proof, and commits unless passed commit=False.

A recent sign-in

Linking a provider account and setting a first password give the account a new way in, so they ask for a sign-in made less than AUTH_REAUTH_SECONDS (900) ago. Every login stamps the session (reauth.SESSION_KEY); a session restored from a "Remember me" cookie has no stamp. The gate is decorators.recent_login_required, or reauthenticate_first() inside a view, which send the browser to /account/reauthenticate (a JSON caller gets a 401 with {"code": "reauthentication_required"}) and back. That page asks for the password, on the login's own throttle, and other features add other ways in its auth.reauthenticate.methods slot (identities offers the providers the account signs in with). reauth.recently_authenticated() answers the question, and reauth.mark_authenticated() records a proof.

An account without a usable password sees "Set a password" on My account, with no current password to type: a recent sign-in stands for it there, for a new password and for a new address.

Pages that hold a token

tokens.keep_token_private(response) is for a page whose address carries a token (a reset or confirmation link) or whose body shows one (a new API token). It sends Referrer-Policy: no-referrer, Cache-Control: no-store and a Content-Security-Policy of script-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline', so no script of another site runs there, beside the product's own policy when it sets one. A feature calls it from an after_request of its blueprint.

A new address

My account asks for the current password to set a new address, as it does for a new password (a recent sign-in, for an account without a password of its own). Where the product confirms addresses the new one waits in pending_email: auth calls the confirmation feature's send_email_change(user, old_email), which mails a link to the new address and a notice to the old one, and the account keeps signing in with its address until confirm_email_change_with_token applies it (confirmed, every session ended, the links mailed to the old address spent). Where nothing confirms addresses the new one applies at once, unverified, and ends the other sessions. An address that only differs in case or width is the same address and is just stored as typed.

Sessions

Every session and "Remember me" cookie carries the account's session_version (User.get_id() is "<id>:<version>"), and the user loader refuses one whose version is not the account's. A new password (a reset link, My account, the accounts screen, set-password), switching the account off and "Sign out everywhere else" on My account raise it. Whoever changed the password on My account stays signed in in that browser. A bare id, as auth 1.21 kept and as tests that write _user_id keep, is honoured only while the version is still 1; auth 2.0 drops it.

The "Remember me" cookie lasts AUTH_REMEMBER_DAYS (30) and is only set when the box is ticked; 0 takes the box away. Every login gets a new session id.

/logout signs out by POST, with its CSRF token, and empties the session but for the reader's language. While AUTH_LOGOUT_GET is on (the default for this minor) a GET still signs out, for the links that are not forms yet. Off, a GET shows a page whose button signs out by POST.

One-time links

tokens.OneTimeTokenService (also registered as OneTimeTokenService) issues the links other features mail: reset, confirmemail. A token is 32 random bytes; the table auth_token keeps its SHA-256, the account, its purpose (password-reset, email-confirm, email-change), the address it was mailed to, its expiry and when it was used.

• issue(user, purpose, max_age, target=None) returns the token for the link.
• lookup(token, purpose) returns the stored row, used or expired or not, so a page can say which.
• redeem(token, purpose) spends it with one UPDATE ... WHERE used_at IS NULL AND expires_at > now, and spends the account's other tokens for the same purpose. It does not commit: the caller makes the change the link stands for in the same transaction, so two requests with the same link change one thing once.
• Every issue removes a batch of expired tokens, and splent feature:auth purge-tokens removes them all.

AuthenticationService.reset_password_with_token(token, password) is the whole of a reset in one transaction. A link mailed to an address the account no longer has opens nothing.

Use it in a product

splent feature:add splent_feature_auth

Develop

splent feature:test splent_feature_auth
splent feature:contract splent_feature_auth

Release

splent feature:release splent_feature_auth --dry-run --bump patch
splent feature:release splent_feature_auth

The first command rehearses the release and changes nothing. The second publishes it to the git forge and to PyPI, and a PyPI version is permanent.