Django Integration

This page describes how authentication can be done using the Django web framework. Much of the library internals have been abstracted away so that Openid authentication can easily be plugged into django projects.

Setup

Add to INSTALLED_APPS

At first django settings need to be adapted to include simple_openid_connect.integrations.django as an app:

# settings.py
INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...,
    "simple_openid_connect.integrations.django",
]

simple_openid_connect.integrations.django.TokenVerificationMiddleware should also be added to the middleware stack. This middleware makes sure that access tokens of users are still valid. It is not required if the library is only used as a Resource Server (see below):

# settings.py
MIDDLEWARE = [
    ...,
    "simple_openid_connect.integrations.django.middleware.TokenVerificationMiddleware",
]

Add url routes

Django needs to be told how to route Openid related login views. To do so, include this libraries urls into yours:

# urls.py
urlpatterns = [
    ...,
    path("auth/openid/", include("simple_openid_connect.integrations.django.urls")),
]

Required settings

These values must be set in the projects settings.py to configure openid authentication.

  • OPENID_ISSUER

    This settings configures the Openid issuer to use. This is required to be an https url and an Openid discovery document should be served under {issuer}/.well-known/openid-configuration.

  • OPENID_CLIENT_ID

    The client id that was issued to you from your Openid provider.

Settings Reference

For a list of all settings that are read by simple_openid_connect, see the SettingsModel.

Usage

After setup is done, this library is very hands off. It authenticates users using Openid-Connect, parses retrieved user information, automatically creates or updates user objects as required and then authenticates the current session. It interoperates with Django’s builtin authentication so things like the login_required decorator can still be used.

If you want to authenticate a user via Openid, simply visit /auth/openid/login on your app.

Custom User Mapping

User objects are automatically created when the user authenticates to a django server using this integration. This is done when the server is a relying party as well as when it is a resource server. The goal is to be as transparent as possible to programmers because a user object is always available and associated with authenticated requests.

Sometimes it is useful though to customize the behavior in which tokens are mapped to users or which information is extracted from the tokens. This can be done in two steps:

  1. Subclass UserMapper and overwrite the methods which should be changed.

    For details about which methods exist on the class, what they should do and what their signatures are, take a look at the UserMapper class documentation.

    from simple_openid_connect.integrations.django.user_mapping import UserMapper

class CustomUserMapper(UserMapper):
    def automap_user_attrs(self, user, user_data):
        super().automap_user_attrs(user, user_data)
        if user_data.preferred_username == "admin":
            user.is_superuser = True
            user.is_staff = True

  2. Configure simple_openid_connect to use the new UserMapper class by setting the OPENID_USER_MAPPER attribute in your projects settings.py.

Accessing OpenidClient

If you ever need to do your own Openid interactions, a configured OpenidClient is available at this libraries AppConfig instance. You can access it like this:

from simple_openid_connect.integrations.django.apps import OpenidAppConfig
client = OpenidAppConfig.get_instance().get_client(request)

Resource Server Usage

If your app is not the one where a user is authenticated via Openid but instead one that accepts access tokens from authenticated user (e.g. an API server) you can still use this library. Using Django REST Framework is recommended but a plain django app can also be used as a resource server without it.

Access token validation is usually very simple and consists of asking the Openid provider if a given token is valid. This process is called token introspection and the provider may add more information about the token in its response (e.g. which scopes the token has access to).

Resource Server Configuration

There is almost no additional setup required when this library is used for resource servers. Settings like OPENID_ISSUER or client credentials are reused. The only exception is that the OPENID_REDIRECT_URI setting should be explicitly set to None if your project is exclusively acting as a resource server.

Verification using a client

A simple way to introspect a token is using an OpenidClient:

client = OpenidClient(...)
response = client.introspect_token(dummy_openid_provider.cheat_token)
assert response.active

Using the access_token_required decorator

If you are using Django, you can decorate your view functions with the access_token_required to enforce that only requests with a valid access token can access the view:

@access_token_required(required_scopes="openid my_resource:read")
def read_resource(request):
    ...