django-locksmith

Django utilities for shared api authentication & analytics.

django-locksmith provides two Django applications, locksmith.auth and locksmith.hub. locksmith.hub is an application that facilitates signup and has generic analytics support that supports reports from any API locksmith.auth provides mechanisms for being issued an API key from a hub server and authenticating API calls. It also includes a management command to submit nightly reports to a locksmith.hub instance.

django-locksmith is a project of Sunlight Labs (c) 2010. Written by James Turk <jturk@sunlightfoundation.com>.

All code is under a BSD-style license, see LICENSE for details.

Requirements

• python >= 2.5
• Django >= 1.2b1

locksmith.hub

locksmith.hub provides several views, an authentication backend, and a management command. A single instance of locksmith.hub can serve as the core of any number of related APIs.

Settings

To use locksmith.hub it is necessary to add a few things to settings.py:

In INSTALLED_APPS add 'locksmith.hub'.

In AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS add 'locksmith.hub.auth_backend.LocksmithBackend'

This will make the locksmith.hub models and management command available and allow users to sign in using their email and apikey.

Additionally there is one optional setting: LOCKSMITH_EMAIL_SUBJECT which if set will be used as the subject of the email sent when users request a key. (defaults to 'API Registration')

URLs

locksmith.hub provides two sets of URL patterns, one for registration and the other for analytics.

They can be added to your urls.py with the following line:

(r'^', include('locksmith.hub.urls')),

This adds an accounts/ path that contains user-facing urls and an analytics/ path that adds analytics views that are only accessible by staff members.

locksmith.auth

locksmith.auth provides URL endpoints and a management command that aim to make writing an API that gets its authentication details from a locksmith.hub instance as simple as possible.

Installation

To start using locksmith.auth:

• add 'locksmith.auth' to INSTALLED_APPS
• add a line like: (r'^api/', include('locksmith.auth.urls')) to urls.py

Add the following settings to your settings.py:

LOCKSMITH_HUB_URL

URL to your locksmith.hub instance

LOCKSMITH_SIGNING_KEY

signing key for this locksmith.auth instance

LOCKSMITH_API_NAME

name of this locksmith.auth instance

The following settings are optional and can be used to enable reporting statistics via ./manage.py apireport:

LOCKSMITH_STATS_APP

application of the API log model (default: api)

LOCKSMITH_STATS_MODEL

name of the API log model (default: LogEntry)

LOCKSMITH_STATS_DATE_FIELD

name of the timestamp field on the log model (default: timestamp)

LOCKSMITH_STATS_ENDPOINT_FIELD

name of the endpoint field on the log model (default: method)

LOCKSMITH_STATS_USER_FIELD

name of the key field on the log model (default: caller_key)

You can optionally enable the APIKeyMiddleware by adding 'locksmith.auth.middleware.APIKeyMiddleware' to your MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES. This middleware makes use of two more optional settings:

LOCKSMITH_QS_PARAM

Query String parameter to check for API key (default: apikey)

LOCKSMITH_HTTP_HEADER

HTTP header to check for API key (default: HTTP_X_APIKEY)

Usage

Adding 'locksmith.auth.urls' to your urls.py exposes endpoints that a locksmith.hub instance will use to send API keys to you.

The locksmith.auth.models.ApiKey model is used to store information on the API key, when a user passes a key to your API you should check if such an ApiKey object exists and if it is active (ie. status='A') before serving the request.

Reporting Statistics

To report usage of your API back to the locksmith.hub instance you can call ./manage.py apireport daily.

See the LOCKSMITH_STATS_* settings documented above for details on having apireport find your API log model.

connecting a locksmith.hub and locksmith.auth instance

Assuming that you have a locksmith.hub instance and a locksmith.auth instance running as indicated above, the final step is to connect the two so that API signups become actual usable keys and analytics get back.

# hub: Add a new locksmith.hub.Api instance for the new API (choosing a name and signing key) # hub: Push all existing keys to the new API's locksmith.auth endpoints by calling ./manage.py pushkeys

Assuming you already have a regular cronjob that pushes out new keys the new API will now get notified of new keys along with all of your other APIs.

TODO: document how non-locksmith.auth-enabled APIs can push to locksmith.hub