zoreal-oauth2

Login with ZOREAL for Python backends: the relying-party half of the flow that @zoreal/oauth2-react starts in the browser.

The browser SDK runs the pairing (QR or app link), and hands your frontend an authorization code plus the code_verifier and nonce it generated. Your frontend posts all three to your backend, and this package does the rest: the code exchange with your client authentication, ES256 verification of the ID token against the provider's JWKS, and the /userinfo read for personal claims.

zoreal-oauth2 (this package)   your backend: exchange, verify, userinfo
@zoreal/oauth2-react           your frontend: the button, the QR, the polling

Install

pip install zoreal-oauth2

Python >= 3.9. One dependency: PyJWT[crypto]. Framework-agnostic: the same client works from Django, FastAPI, Flask, or anything else that can receive a POST. The package ships type hints and a py.typed marker.

Getting your credentials

Everything the client constructor needs comes from a ZOREAL asset.

1. Create an account at https://zoreal.com and open Assets.
2. Create an asset — a website (a domain you own) or an app bundle (a reverse-DNS bundle id). An asset is the thing users log in to; its token is your client_id and it looks like ast_....
3. On the asset, open the OAuth2 tab and set:
   • the redirect URIs and JavaScript origins your app uses (requests from anything not registered are rejected — this is the core control),
   • the scopes the client is allowed to request (see the catalogue below),
   • your client authentication: generate a client secret (client_secret_basic), or register a JWKS for private_key_jwt. A public client authenticates with PKCE alone and no secret.
4. A website asset must verify its domain (a DNS or meta-tag proof, shown in the dashboard) before it can request personal-data scopes or sign users in; the verified domain is what your users' sub is pairwise against.

The client_id is public (it ships in your frontend). The client secret is a server-side secret — keep it in your process's secret store, never in the browser.

There is no test-identity sandbox — and that is deliberate

ZOREAL never issues fake or sandbox humans: a pool of test identities would be a fraud vector against the exact thing the product proves. So you always authenticate real ZOREAL IDs.

To develop and test, create a free ZOREAL ID for yourself (enrol in the ZOREAL ID app) and sign in with it. Mark your asset's environment sandbox in the dashboard while building — a sandbox asset may register http://localhost origins and redirect URIs that a production asset may not — and flip it to production when you ship. The identities are real either way; only the allowed origins differ.

Quick start

Build one client at boot and share it; it is thread-safe.

import os
from zoreal_oauth2 import ClientSecretBasic, ZorealOAuth2Client

ZOREAL_OAUTH = ZorealOAuth2Client(
    client_id=os.environ["ZOREAL_CLIENT_ID"],                    # ast_...
    auth=ClientSecretBasic(os.environ["ZOREAL_CLIENT_SECRET"]),
    issuer=os.environ.get("ZOREAL_ISSUER", "https://id.zoreal.com"),
    cache=None,  # optional, for the JWKS; Django's cache object fits as-is
)

The endpoint your frontend posts to (any framework; the body is the {code, code_verifier, nonce} the browser SDK handed over):

login = ZOREAL_OAUTH.authenticate(
    code=payload["code"],
    code_verifier=payload["code_verifier"],  # PKCE is mandatory; the SDK hands it over
    nonce=payload["nonce"],                  # binds the ID token to this login
)

login.sub            # "TC5X-JN7G-YTSE-6E63" — pairwise, stable for YOUR domain
login.acr            # "zoreal.live" | "zoreal.device" | "zoreal.session"
login.assurance      # uniqueness basis, verification month, chip liveness, trust tier
login.email          # from /userinfo, when your client has the email scope
login.email_verified
login.name           # from /userinfo, profile.name scope

Account matching, the shape that works:

user = User.objects.filter(provider="zoreal", uid=login.sub).first()
if user is None:
    if login.email_verified:  # claim, don't collide
        user = User.objects.filter(email=login.email).first()
    user = user or User(email=login.email)
    user.provider, user.uid = "zoreal", login.sub
    user.save()

Assurance levels — acr, and requiring a liveness check

What acr is

acr is an OpenID Connect standard claim — Authentication Context Class Reference. It is a single string in the ID token that says how strongly this particular login was authenticated. Every ZOREAL login carries one, and it is the difference between "someone who once enrolled this identity is behind this request" and "a live human, verified to be the right one, is behind this request right now".

It answers a question the sub cannot. sub tells you who (a stable, pairwise identifier for this person at your site). acr tells you how sure ZOREAL is that the person is really there for this login. A stolen, unlocked phone can still produce a sub; it cannot produce a fresh zoreal.live.

The three levels

Ordered weakest to strongest. Each is what actually happened, never what was requested — a login that could only reach a weaker level says so honestly rather than claiming the level you asked for.

acr	What the holder did	amr	What it proves	What it does not prove
zoreal.session	Nothing — a returning holder at a site they have used before, resumed silently from an existing ZOREAL session, no phone interaction	[]	Continuity: the same browser/session ZOREAL already knew	That the holder is present, or even awake
zoreal.device	Approved the login on their enrolled phone: a signature from a key in the phone's secure element, released by a local biometric or passcode unlock	["hwk","user"]	Possession of the enrolled device and a local unlock on it	That a live face was captured for this login — an unlocked phone in the wrong hands still signs
zoreal.live	All of the above plus a fresh face capture this login: a flash-plus-zoom video scored for presentation attacks and screen replay (moire), matched 1:1 against the government document read at enrolment	["hwk","face","user"]	A live, real, unique human, verified to be the enrolled person, at the moment of this login	— (this is the strongest level)

amr (Authentication Methods References) is the companion claim listing the factors used: hwk a hardware key, user a user-presence/unlock gesture, face a face biometric. zoreal.live is exactly zoreal.device with face added, because a live login is a device approval with a capture on top. It is on the Login as login.amr.

The default is zoreal.device, never zoreal.session: a login that asks for nothing still requires the enrolled phone and a local unlock. Silence has to be explicitly asked for (prompt=none), and it succeeds only for a returning holder at a site whose consent they have already given.

When to require which

• zoreal.session — you never require this; it is what a returning holder gets for a low-stakes convenience re-auth when they ask for the silent path.
• zoreal.device (the default) — a forum, a community, a normal account login. Possession of the enrolled phone plus a local unlock is a high bar already; most sites want exactly this and should pass no acr at all.
• zoreal.live — a bank onboarding, a high-value transaction, an age-gated purchase, a first login, a "confirm it is really you" step before a sensitive action. Anywhere a fresh, unforgeable proof of the live, right human is worth the few seconds a face capture costs.

Requesting versus verifying — the one rule that matters

Requesting a level and verifying it are two separate steps, and only the second is security:

1. Request it on the wire, in the frontend, with the SDK's acr_values: "zoreal.live". This is what makes the holder's ZOREAL ID app run the face capture before it will approve. It is advisory — it shapes what the holder is asked to do, nothing more. A browser is attacker-controlled; a value that only travels through it proves nothing.
2. Verify it here, at token exchange, by passing acr=. The signed acr claim in the ID token — minted by ZOREAL, not by the browser — is the proof.

login = ZOREAL_OAUTH.authenticate(
    code=payload["code"],
    code_verifier=payload["code_verifier"],
    nonce=payload["nonce"],
    acr="zoreal.live",  # raises VerificationError unless the signed token says so
)

login.acr                            # "zoreal.live" — what actually happened
login.live                           # convenience: acr == "zoreal.live"
login.satisfies_acr("zoreal.device") # True (live is stronger than device)

An RP that requests zoreal.live on the wire but never passes acr= here has checked nothing — it has only asked the holder nicely and then trusted a value it never validated.

How the check behaves

Verification satisfies upward: zoreal.session < zoreal.device < zoreal.live, so a requirement of zoreal.device accepts a zoreal.live token (the holder gave you more assurance than you demanded). A token whose acr is below the requirement, missing entirely, or outside the vocabulary is refused with VerificationError. An unknown required value — a typo like "zoreal.liveness" — raises ConfigurationError instead, because that is a bug in your code, not a bad token, and failing every login silently is worse than saying so.

If you prefer to branch rather than raise, omit acr= and inspect the result with satisfies_acr:

login = ZOREAL_OAUTH.authenticate(
    code=payload["code"],
    code_verifier=payload["code_verifier"],
    nonce=payload["nonce"],
)
if not login.satisfies_acr("zoreal.live"):
    # step the user up, or refuse the sensitive action
    ...

acr versus the assurance block

Do not confuse acr with login.assurance. acr grades this login event. The assurance block (login.assurance, a dict) describes the identity behind it — how the person was verified at enrolment (uniqueness basis, verified_on month, whether chip liveness was proven, the trust_tier, the device's key_protection). One is about now; the other is about who they are. A high-value flow usually wants both: acr="zoreal.live" for presence, and the assurance block for the strength of the underlying identity proofing. Its schema is under The assurance block below.

Client authentication

Four methods, one class each. Use the one your client is registered with in the ZOREAL dashboard.

from zoreal_oauth2 import (
    ClientSecretBasic, NoAuth, PrivateKeyJwt, TlsClientAuth, ZorealOAuth2Client,
)

# A public client: no secret, no key. PKCE is the only proof, which is why a
# public client can only ever have been granted Tier A scopes.
ZorealOAuth2Client(client_id, auth=NoAuth())  # auth=None means the same

# Confidential, shared secret. The secret travels as HTTP Basic, never as a
# form field.
ZorealOAuth2Client(client_id, auth=ClientSecretBasic(client_secret))

# Confidential, private_key_jwt (RFC 7523). The library builds and signs a
# fresh 55-second assertion per exchange (iss/sub = client_id, aud = the token
# endpoint, single-use jti); your private key never travels. A P-256 key signs
# ES256 (preferred — it is the same key shape ZOREAL certifies), an RSA key
# signs RS256. PEM string, private JWK dict, or a cryptography key object.
ZorealOAuth2Client(client_id, auth=PrivateKeyJwt(pem_or_key, kid="rp-key-1"))

# Mutual TLS: the certificate and key are loaded into the TLS context for
# every call this client makes. Registrable, but the provider does not accept
# it at the token endpoint yet — the 501 it answers surfaces as an
# ExchangeError with that status, verbatim, rather than being papered over.
ZorealOAuth2Client(client_id, auth=TlsClientAuth("cert.pem", "key.pem"))

What each call does

Call	What happens
authenticate(code, code_verifier, nonce=None, acr=None)	exchange + verify_id_token, returns a Login
exchange(code, code_verifier)	POST {issuer}/token with your client authentication
verify_id_token(id_token, nonce=None, acr=None)	ES256 against {issuer}/jwks, checks iss, aud, exp, and nonce when given
userinfo(access_token)	GET {issuer}/userinfo with the Bearer token
Login.userinfo	the above, once, memoized; {} when there is no access token

Login reads the verified claims for you: sub, acr, amr, assurance, age_over(threshold), nationality from the ID token; email, email_verified, name, given_name, family_name, birthdate, document_type, document_number, issuing_country, document_expires_on and portrait from /userinfo, fetched lazily.

Scopes and claims

Scopes are requested in the frontend (the SDK's scope string, always starting with openid), consented to by the holder, and pre-authorized on your asset. What each grants and where it is delivered:

Scope	Claims	Delivered in	Tier	Requires
openid	sub, iss, aud, exp, iat, nonce, auth_time, acr, amr, and the assurance block	ID token	A	any client
zoreal.age	age_over_13/16/18/21/65 booleans — only the thresholds you registered, never an age or birthdate	ID token	A	any client
zoreal.nationality	nationality (ISO 3166-1 alpha-3)	ID token	A	any client
email	email, email_verified	/userinfo	B	confidential client + verified domain
profile.name	name, given_name, family_name	/userinfo	B	confidential client + verified domain
profile.birthdate	birthdate (full ISO 8601 date)	/userinfo	B	confidential client + verified domain
profile.document	document_type, document_number, issuing_country, document_expires_on	/userinfo	B	confidential client + verified domain
profile.portrait	portrait (the chip's facial image; GDPR Article 9 data)	/userinfo	C	confidential client + verified domain — registrable but not served yet

• Tier A rides in the ID token and is available to every client, so the no-backend browser button can use it. Tier B and C are personal data, served only from /userinfo to a confidential client on a domain you have verified, and never placed in a browser token.
• Age thresholds are a fixed set — 13, 16, 18, 21, 65 — that you register on the asset. login.age_over(n) returns None for a threshold you did not register (no claim was minted), which is different from False.

Error reference

exchange and authenticate raise ExchangeError, which carries the provider's own oauth_error code and description verbatim, plus the HTTP status. What you will actually see:

oauth_error	Cause	Retryable?
invalid_grant	The code is spent — unknown, expired (60s), already used, PKCE mismatch, or the asset's domain verification lapsed mid-flow	No. Start a new login; the code cannot be reused
invalid_request	Client authentication failed — wrong secret, a bad private_key_jwt assertion, or tls_client_auth (not accepted at /token yet)	No. Fix your client configuration
unsupported_grant_type	Something other than authorization_code reached /token	No. A bug

Errors that surface in the frontend instead, before your backend is involved (from the SDK's onError / onNonOAuthError callbacks), so handle them there:

Where	Code	Meaning
/pair	invalid_scope	A scope not on the asset's allowed list, or a Tier B scope from a public client
/pair	invalid_request	Missing PKCE/nonce, an unverified sector, an unregistered redirect_uri, or an unknown acr_values
/pair	login_required	prompt=none with no silent session to resume — the expected quiet outcome, not a failure
pairing	request_denied	The holder declined in their ZOREAL ID app — not an error to alarm on; offer to try again
pairing	request_expired	The pairing window elapsed, or a required liveness the device could not meet — offer to try again

This library's own exceptions, all subclasses of ZorealOAuth2Error:

Exception	Means
ConfigurationError	You built the client wrong, or asked to verify an acr outside the vocabulary — a bug in your code, not a bad token
ExchangeError	The provider refused the code exchange. Carries oauth_error, description, and status (see the /token table above)
VerificationError	The ID token did not verify: signature, iss, aud, exp, an algorithm other than ES256, the nonce, or the acr floor
UserinfoError	The /userinfo call failed. A returning user matched on sub can survive a caught UserinfoError; a signup that needs the email cannot

Token values never appear in any of these messages: an exception message ends up in logs, and a log line is no place for a bearer credential.

The assurance block

login.assurance is the ID token's zoreal claim — a dict describing the strength of the identity behind this login (distinct from acr, which grades the login event). Its keys and their value sets:

Key	Values	Meaning
uniqueness	personal_number | document | none	The anchor the holder is deduplicated on. personal_number (a national number from the chip) is strongest; none means no reliable anchor
verified_on	"YYYY-MM"	The month the underlying document was verified. Quantised to a month on purpose — a day-precision date is a cross-site correlator
chip_liveness_proven	True | False	Whether the passport chip's active-authentication challenge was proven (a genuine chip, not a clone)
trust_tier	high | standard	high when chip_liveness_proven, else standard
key_protection	secure_enclave | strongbox | tee | software	How the holder's device key is protected. software means no hardware attestation

A high-value flow usually pairs acr="zoreal.live" (fresh presence) with a check on the assurance block (identity strength) — e.g. requiring login.assurance["uniqueness"] == "personal_number" and login.assurance["trust_tier"] == "high".

A complete example

A Django view, end to end — the shape a real integration takes. Swap the ORM and the session calls for your framework's; the ZOREAL half is identical everywhere.

# urls.py
from django.urls import path
from . import views

urlpatterns = [path("auth/zoreal", views.zoreal_login, name="zoreal_login")]

# views.py
import json

from django.http import JsonResponse
from django.views.decorators.csrf import csrf_protect
from django.views.decorators.http import require_POST

from zoreal_oauth2 import ExchangeError, UserinfoError, VerificationError

from .accounts import ZOREAL_OAUTH  # the ZorealOAuth2Client built once at boot
from .models import User


# Your frontend's ZorealLogin onSuccess POSTs { code, code_verifier, nonce }
# here over your own TLS. Protect this route with your normal CSRF / same-origin
# controls, exactly as you would any login endpoint — the ZOREAL nonce protects
# the token, not your route. @csrf_protect is doing that job here.
@require_POST
@csrf_protect
def zoreal_login(request):
    payload = json.loads(request.body)

    try:
        login = ZOREAL_OAUTH.authenticate(
            code=payload["code"],
            code_verifier=payload["code_verifier"],
            nonce=payload["nonce"],
            # acr="zoreal.live",  # add for a step-up / high-value login
        )
    except (ExchangeError, VerificationError):
        # A spent code or a token that did not verify: the login must restart.
        return JsonResponse({"error": "sign_in_failed"}, status=401)

    try:
        user = User.objects.filter(provider="zoreal", uid=login.sub).first()
        if user is None:
            # Claim an existing account that owns this verified email rather
            # than colliding on the unique index; otherwise create one. These
            # accessors are the first touch of /userinfo, hence the rescue.
            if login.email_verified:
                user = User.objects.filter(email=login.email).first()
            user = user or User(email=login.email, full_name=login.name)
            user.provider, user.uid = "zoreal", login.sub
            user.save()
    except UserinfoError:
        # Personal data was unreachable. Fine for a returning user matched on
        # sub; fatal for a signup that needs the email.
        return JsonResponse({"error": "sign_in_failed"}, status=401)

    request.session.cycle_key()          # session-fixation defence
    request.session["user_id"] = user.id
    return JsonResponse({"ok": True})

Things worth knowing before you integrate

• The ID token never carries personal data. sub, timing, acr/amr, the assurance block, and — if registered — age_over_* booleans and nationality. Email, names, birthdate and document fields come only from /userinfo, which is why authenticate alone is not enough for a signup.
• The access token lives 10 minutes. Read /userinfo while handling the login; do not store the token for later.
• sub is pairwise per verified domain. It is the right account key and it is derived from your registered sector: changing your asset's domain rotates every sub you have stored. Plan domain changes as a migration.
• ES256 only. The provider signs with nothing else, and this package refuses other algorithms rather than negotiating.
• Always pass the nonce through, and protect your own endpoint too. The SDK generates the nonce and gives it to your frontend in onSuccess; passing it here lets the library confirm the ID token was minted for this login rather than substituted. Two things it does not do: it is not your endpoint's CSRF token (protect your login route with your framework's normal CSRF / same-origin defence), and PKCE — not the nonce — is what proves whoever exchanges the code is whoever started the flow.
• The issuer must match the token's iss exactly — it is compared, not normalized. Production is https://id.zoreal.com; override issuer= only when you were given a non-production provider to point at.
• Email is a deliberate choice. It is a Tier B scope precisely because a shared email defeats the unlinkability the pairwise sub provides. Request it because you need it, not because the checkbox is familiar.
• Pick the client authentication your posture needs. A public client (NoAuth) is for exchanges that happen where a secret cannot live; ClientSecretBasic is the ordinary confidential setup; PrivateKeyJwt replaces the shared secret with proof of possession of a key that never travels, and is the method ZOREAL's certificate path is built around; TlsClientAuth is registrable but the provider answers 501 at the token endpoint today, and this library surfaces that rather than faking it.
• profile.portrait is registrable but not served yet. Login.portrait exists so your code does not change when it ships; expect None until then.

Development on this package

python3 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/pip install -e ".[dev]"
.venv/bin/pytest

The tests are offline: keys are generated in-process and the JWKS fetch is stubbed.

The ZOREAL OAuth2 library family

Repository	Package	Role
zoreal-oauth2-react	@zoreal/oauth2-react (npm)	React frontend: the button, the QR, the polling
zoreal-oauth2-js	@zoreal/oauth2-js (npm)	Framework-free browser core
zoreal-oauth2-react-native	@zoreal/oauth2-react-native (npm)	React Native frontend
zoreal-oauth2-node	@zoreal/oauth2-node (npm)	Node.js backend
zoreal-oauth2-ruby	zoreal-oauth2 (RubyGems)	Ruby backend
zoreal-oauth2-python	zoreal-oauth2 (PyPI)	Python backend
zoreal-oauth2-php	zoreal/oauth2 (Packagist)	PHP backend
zoreal-oauth2-go	github.com/Bynn-Intelligence/zoreal-oauth2-go	Go backend
zoreal-oauth2-java	com.zoreal:oauth2 (Maven Central)	JVM backend
zoreal-oauth2-dotnet	Zoreal.OAuth2 (NuGet)	.NET backend

License

MIT.