Authentication is an important part of any web application. It is the process of verifying the identity of a user before allowing them access to the application. Django REST framework provides a powerful authentication system that can be used to authenticate users in a Django application.
In this tutorial, we will learn how to authenticate users in a Django REST framework application. We will cover the following steps:
The first step is to install the Django REST framework. This can be done using the pip command:
pip install djangorestframeworkOnce the installation is complete, you can add the 'rest_framework' to your INSTALLED_APPS in the settings.py file:
INSTALLED_APPS = [
...
'rest_framework',
]You can also add the following settings to the settings.py file:
REST_FRAMEWORK = {
'DEFAULT_AUTHENTICATION_CLASSES': [
'rest_framework.authentication.BasicAuthentication',
'rest_framework.authentication.SessionAuthentication',
]
}This will enable the authentication classes that we will use in the next step.
The next step is to create a user model. This can be done by creating a new file called models.py in the application directory and adding the following code:
from django.db import models
class User(models.Model):
username = models.CharField(max_length=50)
password = models.CharField(max_length=50)
email = models.EmailField()This will create a basic user model with a username, password, and email field. We will use this model to authenticate users in the next step.
The next step is to create a serializer for the user model. This can be done by creating a new file called serializers.py in the application directory and adding the following code:
from rest_framework import serializers
from .models import User
class UserSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
class Meta:
model = User
fields = ('username', 'password', 'email')This will create a serializer for the user model that will be used to serialize the user data for authentication.
The next step is to create a view for the authentication process. This can be done by creating a new file called views.py in the application directory and adding the following code:
from rest_framework.views import APIView
from rest_framework.response import Response
from rest_framework.authentication import BasicAuthentication
from rest_framework.permissions import IsAuthenticated
class AuthenticationView(APIView):
authentication_classes = [BasicAuthentication]
permission_classes = [IsAuthenticated]
def post(self, request):
username = request.data.get('username')
password = request.data.get('password')
user = authenticate(username=username, password=password)
if user is not None:
login(request, user)
return Response({'status': 'success'})
else:
return Response({'status': 'failed'})This view will handle the authentication process. It will take the username and password from the request and authenticate the user. If the authentication is successful, it will log the user in and return a success response. If the authentication fails, it will return a failed response.
The final step is to add the URLs for the authentication view. This can be done by adding the following code to the urls.py file:
from django.urls import path
from .views import AuthenticationView
urlpatterns = [
path('auth/', AuthenticationView.as_view(), name='auth'),
]This will add the URL for the authentication view. The user can now authenticate by sending a POST request to the URL.
In this tutorial, we have learned how to authenticate users in a Django REST framework application. We have installed the Django REST framework, created a user model, created a serializer, created a view, and added URLs for the authentication view. We have also seen how to authenticate a user using the view.