How to Implement Token Authentication using Django REST Framework

How to Implement Token Authentication using Django REST Framework

In this tutorial you are going to learn how to implement Token-based authentication using Django REST Framework (DRF).

Install Django REST Framework DRF:


pip install djangorestframework


settings.py

 
INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    
    'rest_framework', #pip install djangorestframework
    'rest_framework.authtoken',
    'myapp',
]

REST_FRAMEWORK = {
    'DEFAULT_AUTHENTICATION_CLASSES': [
        'rest_framework.authentication.TokenAuthentication',  
    ],
}

migrate the database python manage.py migrate
views.py

 
#views.py
from django.shortcuts import render, redirect

from rest_framework.views import APIView
from rest_framework.response import Response
from rest_framework.permissions import IsAuthenticated

class HelloView(APIView):
    permission_classes = (IsAuthenticated,) #Generated token c4fe47947247e684dd0e065ea674e1645525d891 for user ednalan23

    def get(self, request):
        content = {'message': 'Hello, World!'}
        return Response(content)

urls.py

 
#urls.py
from django.contrib import admin  
from django.urls import path
from myapp import views  
from django.conf.urls import url
from django.urls import include, path
from rest_framework.authtoken.views import obtain_auth_token

urlpatterns = [
    path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
    path('hello/', views.HelloView.as_view(), name='hello'),
    path('api-token-auth/', obtain_auth_token, name='api_token_auth'),
]

I use HTTPie https://httpie.org/ Python command line tool:

http http://127.0.0.1:8000/hello/

http post http://127.0.0.1:8000/api-token-auth/ username=ednalan23 password=ednalan23

http GET http://127.0.0.1:8000/hello/ "Authorization: Token c4fe47947247e684dd0e065ea674e1645525d891"