Conditionally authenticate users to DRF view - django

I have a DRF view as such:
class DocumentsView(generics.ListCreateAPIView):
permission_classes = ()
authentication_classes = ()
# I typically enforce authentication with
# authentication_classes = (JWTCookieAuthentication,)
def list(self, request):
pagination_class = None
if request.user.is_authenticated:
... return protected data ...
else:
... return generic data ...
I want to allow both users sending a valid token and those not sending a valid token to both get a response from this endpoint. However, request.user.is_authenticated returns False, even when a valid token is sent (I understand why). How can I try to authenticate the user, but still allow them to proceed even if not presenting a token?
Or is better practice to not have the same view to authenticated an unauthenticated users?

What you want is to have no permissions, but still perform authentication.
Authentication validates tokens, gets the user from the database, etc. If you disable it, then no checks of tokens/etc will be performed. This means request.user will always equal AnonymousUser.
class MyView(ListCreateApiView):
permissions_classes = [AllowAny]
It's worth considering using AllowAny as your permission. It is the same as using a blank list [], but makes it clear your intention is to make the view public, rather than a mistake.

Related

DRF Protect user registration view

I have a following user view:
class UserViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
serializer_class = UserSerializer
permission_classes = [NotSafeMethodAndAllowAny | permissions.IsAuthenticated]
def get_queryset(self):
if self.request.user.is_superuser:
return User.objects.all()
else:
return User.objects.filter(id=self.request.user.id)
#action(detail=False, methods=["get"])
def current(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
return Response(self.get_serializer(request.user).data)
As this is a ModelViewSet, it allows API users to create, list, update, delete the users.
Don't mind the NotSafeMethodAndAllowAny permission.
Now I want to somehow protect my API from the users using it like in a script. For example, when I submit the user registration form on my frontend (a separate React app), it should be accepted, but if someone posts to my api/user/ with random registration data like from Postman/curl/etc., I want it to be discarded.
Is there a way for DRF to distinguish between those two types of requests? And possibly via some setting, so I can test it via Postman when in development, but when it runs in production, it would not accept automated requests. I want to prevent a situation where someone would create like a bazillion users in a matter of minutes.
BTW: I use JWT for authentication, but for obvious reasons the registration/login endpoints do not require authentication.
If i understand maybe you can create a CustomPermission and only allow requests from specific IP ADDRESS.
from rest_framework import permissions
class IpAddressPermission(permissions.BasePermission):
"""
Global permission check for IPs.
"""
def has_permission(self, request, view):
remote_address = request.META['REMOTE_ADDR']
if remote_addr == settings.ALLOWED_IP_ADDRESS:
return True
return False

Custom authorization in Django Rest

I am just a newbie with Django, python. I try to build 1 simple API Collection include CRUD basic, and authentication, authorization.
I have 1 simple Views like:
#api_view(['GET'])
#permission_classes([IsUser])
def get_test(request : Request):
return JsonResponse({"message": "success"}, status = status.HTTP_200_OK)
and IsUser is:
class IsUser(IsAuthenticated):
def has_permission(self, request : Request, view):
token = request.query_params.get('token')
if token:
role = jwt.decode(token.split(" ").__getitem__(1), key="secret_key",algorithms="HS256").get('role')
if role == 'User':
return True
else:
return False
return False
My purpose wants to parse the JWT token and authorization based on that. I wonder don't know if my way is really correct? Can anyone give me some comments as well as documentation to better understand this issue? I don't use any other lib because I want to code by myself at first to understand the flow.
Thanks for helping me.
If you are using the default JWT authentication of DRF then permission class IsAuthenticated will verify the the token for you and instead of specifying token in query parameter specify in headers.
However, if you want to allow a specific type(role) of user to access your endpoint. Then create a subclass of BasePermission class as show in the example.
Then simply add IsAuthenticated in #permission_classes([IsUser & IsAuthenticated]) to make it work.
Again, this would work only if you are using the default Group model.
Here is how you can import it from django.contrib.auth.models import Group
from rest_framework.permissions import BasePermission
USER = 'USER'
class IsUser(BasePermission):
def has_permission(self, request, view, user=None):
if not user:
user = request.user
return USER in [role.name for role in user.groups.filter()]

DRF django-rest-framework-simplejwt JWTAuthentication not working

Ideally using django-rest-framework-simplejwt and the authentication class JWTAuthentication, the API should give 403 when I pass the token incorrectly.
Instead, when I am making my API request it is executing successfully even without the Authentication token.
This is a dummy API, my concern is the Authentication should work.
My code looks like this:
class ViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
queryset = get_user_model().objects.all()
serializer_class = SomeSerializer
http_method_names = ("post", "patch")
authentication_classes = (JWTAuthentication,)
When I debug I see that it is executing JWTAuthentication, which in turn returns None.
Which is expected since I am not passing the Token in the header.
def authenticate(self, request):
header = self.get_header(request)
if header is None:
return None
Now I think the View should give Permission Denied, which is not happening.
Not able to understand what is missing here.
If you pass incorrect token, it'll return 401 status response.
But if you don't put authorization header on your request, django will not return 401 response and behave with request as AnonymousUser request.
If you want only authenticated users have access to your ViewSet, you should put permission_classes = [IsAuthenticated,] in your ViewSet.
IsAuthenticated permission class can be imported from rest_framework.permissions

Using external API for token based authentication in Django (DRF)

Context
My API accepts a jwt-token that I can pass to an external endpoint which will return 401 if invalid/expired or user information if still valid. Based on this I will either return 401 or filtered data belonging to the user. Also, POST request's need to involve writing who this resource belongs to for the GET to work. I tried to do this by overriding the get_queryset and perform_create methods.
My viewset looks something like this:
class ReportViewSet(AuthorizedUserBasedFilteredViewset):
queryset = Report.objects.all()
serializer_class = ReportSerializer
def perform_create(self, serializer):
try:
username = self.get_authorized_user()['user']['username']
except Exception as e:
return Response({'error': 'Token does not exist'}, status=HTTP_401_UNAUTHORIZED)
serializer.save(creatd_by=username)
def get_queryset(self):
try:
username = self.get_authorized_user()['user']['username']
except Exception as e:
return Response({'error': 'Token does not exist'}, status=HTTP_401_UNAUTHORIZED)
return Report.objects.filter(created_by=username)
This doesn't work because get_queryset expects a queryset as response.
Questions
How do I bubble up the authorize exception in get_queryset? Is there some other method I should be overriding to the authentication entirely? I still need to pass the username recieved to get_queryset for the authentication to be successful
Is there a better way to do this? I feel that the call to the external authentication API and setting the user to be accessible by the get_queryset and perform_create methods would ideally go somewhere else in the code. I looked at the RemoteUserAuthenticationBackend but that still involved creation of a User object but for this use case the user model is entirely external
Instead of
return Response({'error': 'Token does not exist'}, status=HTTP_401_UNAUTHORIZED)
use this
raise NotAuthenticated(detail='Token does not exist')
Hope above line has addressed your 1st question.
For 2nd question.
You can extend TokenAuthentication and then implement def authenticate_credentials(self, key): method. It is not a good idea to call external API to fetch user each time. Instead, you should get JTW token one time from external source and then pass JWT token in header like Authorization : Bearer cn389ncoiwuencr for each API call. Then you should decode JWT token in current system.
from rest_framework.authentication import TokenAuthentication
from django.contrib.auth import get_user_model
class CustomTokenAuthentication(TokenAuthentication):
keyword = 'Bearer' # token type
def authenticate_credentials(self, key):
#decode JWT.
username = get_username()
User = get_user_model()
user = User(username=username)
return user, key
Finally, add this class to settings.py file.
REST_FRAMEWORK = {
'DEFAULT_PERMISSION_CLASSES': [
'rest_framework.permissions.IsAuthenticated',
],
'DEFAULT_AUTHENTICATION_CLASSES': (
'path.of.CustomTokenAuthentication',
)
}
That will apply to all of your views. or you can use view specific auth class.
class Sample(ViewSet):
authentication_classes = (CustomTokenAuthentication,)
From now you can access user by request.user at views or viewset. That's it.

Django REST Framework Deep Dive - Where is it determined that an enpoint needs an auth token

general django question for those who are more experienced than myself,
I'm reading through the code posted for a tutorial on thinkster.io:
https://github.com/howardderekl/conduit-django/tree/master/conduit/apps
There's an endpoint pertaining to the User model authenticion/models.py that requires an Authorization header for it to return user information defined here in authentication/views.py:
class UserRetrieveUpdateAPIView(RetrieveUpdateAPIView):
permission_classes = (IsAuthenticated,)
renderer_classes = (UserJSONRenderer,)
serializer_class = UserSerializer
def retrieve(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
serializer = self.serializer_class(request.user)
return Response(serializer.data, status=status.HTTP_200_OK)
My question is how/where is it (supposed to be) determined that an endpoint requires this Authorization. My thought is that it is tied to the permission_classes variable stated in the UserRetrieveUpdateAPIVIiew class above. I dug into the package location where this was imported from (from rest_framework.permissions import IsAuthenticated), but that doesn't appear to contain anything pertaining to an HTTP header:
class BasePermissionMetaclass(OperationHolderMixin, type):
pass
class BasePermission(metaclass=BasePermissionMetaclass):
"""
A base class from which all permission classes should inherit.
"""
def has_permission(self, request, view):
"""
Return `True` if permission is granted, `False` otherwise.
"""
return True
def has_object_permission(self, request, view, obj):
"""
Return `True` if permission is granted, `False` otherwise.
"""
return True
...
...
...
class IsAuthenticated(BasePermission):
"""
Allows access only to authenticated users.
"""
def has_permission(self, request, view):
return bool(request.user and request.user.is_authenticated)
I'm looking for best practices on how to structure headers like this for HTTP methods in my backend. Any ideas on where I should look, somewhere in settings.py maybe?
Thanks!
Bonus question:
This header requires two strings in your request. First being 'Token', followed by a space, then the actual JWT for that user. Is this standard practice to use two strings like this? If so, what's the reasoning. I've seen this before with other seemingly arbitrary words used for the first string, 'Token'
As shown in the documentation :
REST framework will attempt to authenticate with each class in the list, and will set request.user and request.auth using the return value of the first class that successfully authenticates.
So if you use a token authentication scheme, the header Authorization: Token ... will result in the setup of the request.user and request.user.is_autenticated will be set to true for the view.
By combining it with the IsAuthenticated permission class, the view will only be accessible if the authorization token is set (and if you don't allow other authentication schemes)
For your second question, you can indeed put any string you want. Here DRF uses Token to make it clearer for which authentication scheme it is used. Since a lot of apps also uses a "Token", a lot of them use the same word. You can also often find Bearer.
Django REST Framework comes with a package for Token Authentication, which is probably what you are looking for:
https://www.django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/authentication/#tokenauthentication
With it, you can assign tokens to individual users, which they can use in lieu of a username and password to authenticate against endpoints. This token is provided in the HTTP header. As for your second question, by providing Token as a convention, it would allow for other custom authentication types:
https://www.django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/authentication/#custom-authentication
The permission_classes are what determine what, if any, authentication is necessary. Good luck!