Django

By Luciano Balmaceda

This tutorial demonstrates how to add user login to a Django application using Auth0. We recommend that you log in to follow this quickstart with examples configured for your account.

I want to integrate with my app

15 minutes

Configure Auth0
Create a Django Application configured to use Auth0
Trigger Authentication
Display User Information
Logout
Add URL Mappings
Run the Sample

I want to explore a sample app

2 minutes

Get a sample configured with your account settings or check it out on Github.

View on Github

System requirements: python 3.5 and up | django 2.1 and up | social-auth-app-django 3.1 and up | python-jose 3.0 and up | python-dotenv 0.9 and up

New to Auth? Learn How Auth0 works, how it integrates with Regular Web Applications and which protocol it uses.

When you signed up for Auth0, a new application was created for you, or you could have created a new one. You will need some details about that application to communicate with Auth0. You can get these details from the Application Settings section in the Auth0 dashboard.

App Dashboard

You need the following information:

Domain
Client ID
Client Secret

If you download the sample from the top of this page, these details are filled out for you.

A callback URL is a URL in your application where Auth0 redirects the user after they have authenticated. The callback URL for your app must be added to the Allowed Callback URLs field in your Application Settings. If this field is not set, users will be unable to log in to the application and will get an error.

If you are following along with the sample project you downloaded from the top of this page, the callback URL you need to add to the Allowed Callback URLs field is http://localhost:3000/complete/auth0.

A logout URL is a URL in your application that Auth0 can return to after the user has been logged out of the authorization server. This is specified in the returnTo query parameter. The logout URL for your app must be added to the Allowed Logout URLs field in your Application Settings. If this field is not set, users will be unable to log out from the application and will get an error.

If you are following along with the sample project you downloaded from the top of this page, the logout URL you need to add to the Allowed Logout URLs field is http://localhost:3000.

This guide will use social_django which is the Django implementation of Python Social Auth. It adds an OAuth stack to the user authentication & authorization system bundled by the Django Web Framework.

This quickstart uses Django 2, if you are using Django 1 instead, follow the sample.

Add the following dependencies to your requirements.txt:

django~=2.1
social-auth-app-django~=3.1
python-jose~=3.0
python-dotenv~=0.9

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Once the dependencies are listed in requirements.txt, run the following command:

pip install -r requirements.txt

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This guide assumes you already have a Django application set up. If that is not the case, follow the steps in the Django Tutorial.

The sample project was created with the following commands:

$ django-admin startproject webappexample
$ cd webappexample
$ python manage.py startapp auth0login

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The settings.py file contains the configuration of your Django project.

Add one entry for social_django and for your application into the INSTALLED_APPS entry.

# webappexample\settings.py

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'social_django',
    '<your application name>'  # such as 'webappexample'
]

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Set the Callback URL in the Application Settings to: Add your Auth0 domain, the Client Id and the Client Secret. You can get this information the application settings in the Auth0 Dashboard.

# webappexample\settings.py

SOCIAL_AUTH_TRAILING_SLASH = False  # Remove trailing slash from routes
SOCIAL_AUTH_AUTH0_DOMAIN = 'YOUR_DOMAIN'
SOCIAL_AUTH_AUTH0_KEY = 'YOUR_CLIENT_ID'
SOCIAL_AUTH_AUTH0_SECRET = 'YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET'

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Set the SOCIAL_AUTH_AUTH0_SCOPE variable with the scopes the application will request when authenticating. Check the Scopes documentation for more information.

# webappexample\settings.py

SOCIAL_AUTH_AUTH0_SCOPE = [
    'openid',
    'profile',
    'email'
]

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The social_django application defined in INSTALLED_APPS requires a database. Run the following command to create all the required databases for the applications defined in INSTALLED_APPS:

$ python manage.py migrate

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The social_django application is now configured. The next step is to create an authentication backend that bridges social_django with Auth0.

Create a file to implement the custom Auth0 authentication backend.

# auth0login/auth0backend.py

from urllib import request
from jose import jwt
from social_core.backends.oauth import BaseOAuth2


class Auth0(BaseOAuth2):
    """Auth0 OAuth authentication backend"""
    name = 'auth0'
    SCOPE_SEPARATOR = ' '
    ACCESS_TOKEN_METHOD = 'POST'
    REDIRECT_STATE = False
    EXTRA_DATA = [
        ('picture', 'picture'),
        ('email', 'email')
    ]

    def authorization_url(self):
        return 'https://' + self.setting('DOMAIN') + '/authorize'

    def access_token_url(self):
        return 'https://' + self.setting('DOMAIN') + '/oauth/token'

    def get_user_id(self, details, response):
        """Return current user id."""
        return details['user_id']

    def get_user_details(self, response):
        # Obtain JWT and the keys to validate the signature
        id_token = response.get('id_token')
        jwks = request.urlopen('https://' + self.setting('DOMAIN') + '/.well-known/jwks.json')
        issuer = 'https://' + self.setting('DOMAIN') + '/'
        audience = self.setting('KEY')  # CLIENT_ID
        payload = jwt.decode(id_token, jwks.read(), algorithms=['RS256'], audience=audience, issuer=issuer)

        return {'username': payload['nickname'],
                'first_name': payload['name'],
                'picture': payload['picture'],
                'user_id': payload['sub'],
                'email': payload['email']}

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The callback URL will be calculated by social-auth by concatenating /callback with the backend name property, so it will be /callback/auth0.

Register the authentication backends in settings.py. Add the custom backend for Auth0 and ModelBackend for users to be able to login with username/password method.

# webappexample\settings.py

AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS = {
    'YOUR_DJANGO_APP_NAME.auth0backend.Auth0',
    'django.contrib.auth.backends.ModelBackend'
}

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Configure the login, redirect login and redirect logout URLs as set below. The LOGIN_URL ends with auth0 as it needs to match the name property of the custom backend defined above.

# webappexample\settings.py

LOGIN_URL = '/login/auth0'
LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL = '/dashboard'

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Add a handler for the "index" view in your views.py to render the index.html if the user needs to log in. If the user is already logged in, the "dashboard" view will be shown instead.

# auth0login/views.py

from django.shortcuts import render, redirect

def index(request):
    user = request.user
    if user.is_authenticated:
        return redirect(dashboard)
    else:
        return render(request, 'index.html')

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Add a link to /login/auth0 in the index.html template.

<!-- auth0login/templates/index.html -->

<div class="login-box auth0-box before">
    <img src="https://i.cloudup.com/StzWWrY34s.png" />
    <h3>Auth0 Example</h3>
    <p>Zero friction identity infrastructure, built for developers</p>
    <a class="btn btn-primary btn-lg btn-login btn-block" href="/login/auth0">Log In</a>
</div>

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After the user is logged in, you can access the user information from the request.user property. Add a handler for the /dashboard endpoint in the views.py file. This same "dashboard" view will be displayed when a user that is already logged in tries to visit the "index" view.

# auth0login/views.py

from django.shortcuts import render, redirect
from django.contrib.auth.decorators import login_required
import json

@login_required
def dashboard(request):
    user = request.user
    auth0user = user.social_auth.get(provider='auth0')
    userdata = {
        'user_id': auth0user.uid,
        'name': user.first_name,
        'picture': auth0user.extra_data['picture'],
        'email': auth0user.extra_data['email'],
    }

    return render(request, 'dashboard.html', {
        'auth0User': auth0user,
        'userdata': json.dumps(userdata, indent=4)
    })

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Add the following snippet to dashboard.html to display the user information.

<!-- auth0login/templates/dashboard.html -->
<div class="logged-in-box auth0-box logged-in">
    <h1 id="logo"><img src="//cdn.auth0.com/samples/auth0_logo_final_blue_RGB.png" /></h1>
    <img class="avatar" src="{{ auth0User.extra_data.picture }}"/>
    <h2>Welcome {{ user.username }}</h2>
    <pre>{{ userdata }}</pre>
</div>

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To log a user out, add a link to /logout in dashboard.html.

<!-- auth0login/templates/dashboard.html -->

<div class="logged-in-box auth0-box logged-in">
    <h1 id="logo"><img src="//cdn.auth0.com/samples/auth0_logo_final_blue_RGB.png" /></h1>
    <img class="avatar" src="{{ auth0User.extra_data.picture }}"/>
    <h2>Welcome {{ user.username }}</h2>
    <pre>{{ userdata }}</pre>
    <a class="btn btn-primary btn-lg btn-logout btn-block" href="/logout">Logout</a>
</div>

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Then, add a logout method in views.py to clear the session and redirect the user to the Auth0 logout endpoint.

# auth0login/views.py

# ...
from django.contrib.auth import logout as log_out
from django.conf import settings
from django.http import HttpResponseRedirect
from urllib.parse import urlencode

# ...

def logout(request):
    log_out(request)
    return_to = urlencode({'returnTo': request.build_absolute_uri('/')})
    logout_url = 'https://%s/v2/logout?client_id=%s&%s' % \
                 (settings.SOCIAL_AUTH_AUTH0_DOMAIN, settings.SOCIAL_AUTH_AUTH0_KEY, return_to)
    return HttpResponseRedirect(logout_url)

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In previous steps, we added methods to the views.py file. We need to map those methods to URLs.

Django has a URL dispatcher that lets you map URL patterns to views.

Add mappings for the root folder, the dashboard folder, and the authentication applications in urls.py.

# auth0login\urls.py

urlpatterns = [
    path('', views.index),
    path('dashboard', views.dashboard),
    path('logout', views.logout),
    path('', include('django.contrib.auth.urls')),
    path('', include('social_django.urls')),
]

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To run the sample from a terminal, change the directory to the root folder of the project and execute the following line:

python manage.py migrate
python manage.py runserver 3000

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The application will be accessible on http://localhost:3000. Follow the Log In link to log in or sign up to your Auth0 tenant. Upon successful login or signup, you should be redirected to the user's profile page.