django-rest-framework Authentication Using basic token-based authentication
Example
Django REST Framework provides a basic token-based authentication mechanism which needs to be configured as an application in Django before being usable, so that tokens are created in the database, and their lifecycle handled.
Add Token-based authentication to settings.py
INSTALLED_APPS = (
...
'rest_framework.authtoken'
)
Run the database migration
./manage.py migrate
Create tokens for your users
Somehow, you will have to create a token and return it:
def some_api(request):
token = Token.objects.create(user=request.user)
return Response({'token': token.key})
There is already an API endpoint in the token application, so that you can simply add the following to your urls.py:
urls.py
from rest_framework.authtoken import views
urlpatterns += [
url(r'^auth-token/', views.obtain_auth_token)
]
Clients can now authenticate
Using a Authorization header like:
Authorization: Token 123456789
Prefixed by a literal "Token" and the token itself after whitespace.
The literal can be changed by subclassing TokenAuthentication and changing the keyword class variable.
If authenticated, request.auth will contain the rest_framework.authtoken.models.BasicToken instance.
