Django REST framework is a powerful and flexible toolkit for building Web APIs. It provides a full suite of features for developing RESTful Web services, including authentication, serialization, and request handling. In this tutorial, we will learn how to customize authentication in Django REST framework.
The first step is to install Django REST framework. You can do this using pip:
pip install djangorestframeworkOnce the installation is complete, you can verify that it is installed correctly by running the following command:
python -m django --versionIf the installation was successful, you should see the version of Django REST framework that you installed.
The next step is to create a Django project. To do this, you can use the django-admin command:
django-admin startproject myprojectThis will create a new directory called myproject with the necessary files and directories for a Django project. You can then change into the new directory and start the development server:
cd myprojectpython manage.py runserverIf the server starts successfully, you should see a message like this:
Starting development server at http://127.0.0.1:8000/You can now open a web browser and navigate to http://127.0.0.1:8000/ to see the default Django page.
Now that we have a Django project, we need to add the Django REST framework to it. To do this, we need to add the rest_framework app to the INSTALLED_APPS setting in the settings.py file:
INSTALLED_APPS = [ ... 'rest_framework',]We also need to add the Django REST framework URLs to the urls.py file:
urlpatterns = [ ... path('api-auth/', include('rest_framework.urls')),]Now we can start the development server again and navigate to http://127.0.0.1:8000/api-auth/ to see the Django REST framework login page.
Now that we have the Django REST framework installed, we can create a custom authentication class. To do this, we need to create a new file called custom_authentication.py in the myproject directory:
from rest_framework.authentication import BaseAuthenticationclass CustomAuthentication(BaseAuthentication): def authenticate(self, request): # Your custom authentication logic passIn this file, we have created a custom authentication class that inherits from the BaseAuthentication class. We can now add our custom authentication logic to the authenticate method.
Once we have created our custom authentication class, we need to add it to the settings.py file:
REST_FRAMEWORK = { 'DEFAULT_AUTHENTICATION_CLASSES': ( 'myproject.custom_authentication.CustomAuthentication', )}This will tell the Django REST framework to use our custom authentication class when authenticating requests.
Now that we have added our custom authentication class to the settings, we can test it by making a request to the API. To do this, we can use the curl command:
curl -X GET http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/If the authentication is successful, you should see a response like this:
{ "message": "Authentication successful."}If the authentication fails, you should see a response like this:
{ "message": "Authentication failed."}If you see the authentication successful message, then your custom authentication class is working correctly.
In this tutorial, we have learned how to customize authentication in Django REST framework. We have installed the Django REST framework, created a Django project, added the Django REST framework to the project, created a custom authentication class, added the custom authentication class to the settings, and tested the custom authentication. With this knowledge, you should be able to customize authentication in Django REST framework for your own projects.