django-altauth

Set of utilities to allow for alternative authentication methods specifically thought for access through static scripts.

django-altauth, as of now, provides support for:

1. RSA public key authentication (works with standard .pem formats or the ssh public RSA key format).
2. Authentication using an alternative password set by the user.

Why this app?

This app was created to address the following user case: I'm managing a web service that works as a wrapper around a data provider. Users can log in with ldap. Usually use this data as input for a script,and don't want to store their passwords in the scripts for obvious reasons.

Supported methods

AlternativePassword

Allows the users to create an alternative password to use to authenticate to the website. This is useful for users who don't want to store their personal password in their scripts.

Flow:

1. Go to 'altauth/set_alternative_password/' to set the alternative password
2. Connect using the form at 'altauth/alternative_password_login/'

PublicKey

Allows the users to authenticate using a public key (for now, only RSA is supported).

Flow:

1. Go to 'altauth/set_public_key/' to set the public key.
2. Go to 'altauth/get_public_key_token/' to get an encrypted token for a certain user
3. Decript the token and use it to connect to 'altauth/public_key_login/'

Check out "example/example.sh" for a basic script that shows how to authenticate with a public key.

Quick start

You can install django_altauth with pip

pip install django_altauth

To begin using django_altauth:

1. Add "altauth" to your INSTALLED_APPS setting like this:

   INSTALLED_APPS = (
       ...
       'altauth',
   )
   

2. Include the altauth URLconf in your project urls.py like this:

   url(r'^altauth/', include('altauth.urls')),
   

3. Run python manage.py syncdb to create the altauth models.

4. Add the authentication methods you need to AUTHENTICATION_BACKEND in settings.py:

   AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS = ('django.contrib.auth.backends.ModelBackend',
                              'altauth.auth_backends.AlternativePasswordBackend',
                              'altauth.auth_backends.PublicKeyBackend')
   

5. django_altauth comes with a base.html. Make sure to provide a similar template with a content block, or override django_altauth' templates. The default base.html template comes in this form:

{% block content %} {% endblock %}