An Indian nerd's thoughts about how things (should) work

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This is a small tutorial on how to use HTTP authentication for your site. Firstly you need to copy this file to httpauth.py and place it at /httpauth.py

import base64
from django.contrib.auth.models import User
from django.http import HttpResponse
from django.contrib.auth import authenticate, login

#############################################################################
#
def view_or_basicauth(view, request, test_func, realm = "", *args, **kwargs):
    """
    This is a helper function used by both 'logged_in_or_basicauth' and
    'has_perm_or_basicauth' that does the nitty of determining if they
    are already logged in or if they have provided proper http-authorization
    and returning the view if all goes well, otherwise responding with a 401.
    """
    if test_func(request.user):
        # Already logged in, just return the view.
        #
        return view(request, *args, **kwargs)

    # They are not logged in. See if they provided login credentials
    #
    if 'HTTP_AUTHORIZATION' in request.META:
        auth = request.META['HTTP_AUTHORIZATION'].split()
        if len(auth) == 2:
            # NOTE: We are only support basic authentication for now.
            #
            if auth[0].lower() == "basic":
                uname, passwd = base64.b64decode(auth[1]).split(':')
                email_user = User.objects.filter(email=uname)
                if not email_user:
                    username = uname
                else:
                    username = email_user[0].username
                user = authenticate(username=username, password=passwd)
                if user is not None:
                    if user.is_active:
                        login(request, user)
                        request.user = user
                        return view(request, *args, **kwargs)

    # Either they did not provide an authorization header or
    # something in the authorization attempt failed. Send a 401
    # back to them to ask them to authenticate.
    #
    response = HttpResponse()
    response.status_code = 401
    response['WWW-Authenticate'] = 'Basic realm="%s"' % realm
    return response

#############################################################################
#
def logged_in_or_basicauth(realm = ""):
    """
    A simple decorator that requires a user to be logged in. If they are not
    logged in the request is examined for a 'authorization' header.

    If the header is present it is tested for basic authentication and
    the user is logged in with the provided credentials.

    If the header is not present a http 401 is sent back to the
    requestor to provide credentials.

    The purpose of this is that in several django projects I have needed
    several specific views that need to support basic authentication, yet the
    web site as a whole used django's provided authentication.

    The uses for this are for urls that are access programmatically such as
    by rss feed readers, yet the view requires a user to be logged in. Many rss
    readers support supplying the authentication credentials via http basic
    auth (and they do NOT support a redirect to a form where they post a
    username/password.)

    Use is simple:

    @logged_in_or_basicauth
    def your_view:
        ...

    You can provide the name of the realm to ask for authentication within.
    """
    def view_decorator(func):
        def wrapper(request, *args, **kwargs):
            return view_or_basicauth(func, request,
                                     lambda u: u.is_authenticated(),
                                     realm, *args, **kwargs)
        return wrapper
    return view_decorator

#############################################################################
#
def has_perm_or_basicauth(perm, realm = ""):
    """
    This is similar to the above decorator 'logged_in_or_basicauth'
    except that it requires the logged in user to have a specific
    permission.

    Use:

    @logged_in_or_basicauth('asforums.view_forumcollection')
    def your_view:
        ...

    """
    def view_decorator(func):
        def wrapper(request, *args, **kwargs):
            return view_or_basicauth(func, request,
                                     lambda u: u.has_perm(perm),
                                     realm, *args, **kwargs)
        return wrapper
    return view_decorator

You can use it in the view like this

from httpauth import *
@logged_in_or_basicauth()
def fu(request,type):
     pass

So this is dead simple and allows you to use simple HTTP authentication for your views. For any more help on this catch me at me@dipankar.name.

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