starlette-auth-toolkit

Authentication backends and helpers for Starlette-based apps and frameworks.

Note: documentation is in progress. In the meantime, feel free to read the source code.

Features

• Database-agnostic.
• User model-agnostic.
• Built-in password hashing powered by PassLib.
• Hash migration support.
• Built-in support for common authentication flows, including Basic and Bearer authentication.
• Support for multiple authentication backends.
• Easy integration with orm.

Contents

• Installation
• Quickstart
• Base backends
• Password hashers
• Authentication helpers

Installation

pip install starlette-auth-toolkit

Quickstart

import typing

from starlette.applications import Starlette
from starlette.authentication import requires
from starlette.middleware.authentication import AuthenticationMiddleware
from starlette.responses import JSONResponse

from starlette_auth_toolkit.base.backends import BasicAuthBackend
from starlette_auth_toolkit.base.helpers import BaseAuthenticate
from starlette_auth_toolkit.cryptography import PBKDF2Hasher


# User model

class User(typing.NamedTuple):
    username: str
    password: str


# Password hasher

hasher = PBKDF2Hasher()


# Fake storage

USERS = {
    "alice": User(username="alice", password=hasher.make_sync("alicepwd")),
    "bob": User(username="bob", password=hasher.make_sync("bobpwd")),
}


# Authentication helper

class Authenticate(BaseAuthenticate):
    async def find_user(self, username: str):
        return USERS.get(username)

    async def verify_password(self, user: User, password: str):
        return await hasher.verify(password, user.password)


authenticate = Authenticate()


# Authentication backend

class BasicAuth(BasicAuthBackend):
    async def verify(
        self, username: str, password: str
    ) -> typing.Optional[User]:
        return await authenticate(username, password)


# Application

app = Starlette()
app.add_middleware(AuthenticationMiddleware, backend=BasicAuth())


@app.route("/")
@requires("authenticated")
async def home(request):
    """Example protected route."""
    return JSONResponse({"message": f"Hello, {request.user.username}!"})

Save this file as app.py. Then, assuming you have uvicorn installed, run $ uvicorn app:app and make requests:

• Anonymous request:

curl http://localhost:8000 -i

HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized
date: Sun, 21 Jul 2019 17:54:00 GMT
server: uvicorn
content-length: 52
content-type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

Could not authenticate with the provided credentials

• Authenticated request:

curl -u alice:alicepwd http://localhost:8000

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
date: Sun, 21 Jul 2019 17:54:28 GMT
server: uvicorn
content-length: 27
content-type: application/json

{"message":"Hello, alice!"}

For a real-world example, see here.

Base backends

Base backends implement an authentication flow, but the exact implementation of credentials verification is left up to you. This means you can choose to perform a database query, use environment variables or private files, etc.

These backends grant a set of scopes when authentication succeeds.

Although base backends are user model agnostic, we recommend you implement the interface specified by starlette.authentication.BaseUser (see also Starlette authentication).

They are available at starlette_auth_toolkit.base.backends.

BasicAuthBackend

Implementation of the Basic authentication scheme.

Request header format

Authorization: Basic {credentials}

where {credentials} refers to the base64 encoding of {username}:{password}.

Example

# myapp/auth.py
from starlette.authentication import SimpleUser  # or a custom user model
from starlette_auth_toolkit.base import backends

class BasicAuthBackend(backends.BasicAuthBackend):
    async def verify(self, username: str, password: str):
        # In practice, request the database to find the user associated
        # to `username`, and validate that its password hash matches the
        # given password.
        if (username, password) != ("bob", "s3kr3t"):
            return None
        return SimpleUser(username)

Abstract methods

• async .verify(self, username: str, password: str) -> Optional[BaseUser]

  If username and password are valid, return the corresponding user. Otherwise, return None.

Scopes

• authenticated

BearerAuthBackend

Implementation of the Bearer authentication scheme, also known as Token authentication.

Request header format

Authorization: Bearer {token}

Example

# myapp/auth.py
from starlette.authentication import SimpleUser  # or a custom user model
from starlette_auth_toolkit.base import backends

class BearerAuthBackend(backends.BearerAuthBackend):
    async def verify(self, token: str):
        # In practice, request the database to find the token object
        # associated to `token`, and return its associated user.
        if token != "abcd":
            return None
        return SimpleUser("bob")

Abstract methods

• async .verify(self, token: str) -> Optional[BaseUser]

  If token refers to a valid token, return the corresponding user. Otherwise, return None.

Scopes

• authenticated

Password hashers

This package provides password hashing utilities built on top of PassLib.

Usage

• Asynchronous: await .make() / await .verify() (hashing and verification occurs in the threadpool)

import asyncio
from starlette_auth_toolkit.cryptography import PBKDF2Hasher

async def main():
    # Instanciate a hasher:
    hasher = PBKDF2Hasher()

    # Hash a password:
    pwd = await hasher.make("hello")

    # Verify a password against a known hash:
    assert await hasher.verify("hello", pwd)

# Python 3.7+
asyncio.run(main())

• Blocking: .make_sync() / .verify_sync()

from starlette_auth_toolkit.cryptography import PBKDF2Hasher

# Instanciate a hasher:
hasher = PBKDF2Hasher()

# Hash a password
pwd = hasher.make_sync("hello")

# Verify a password against a known hash:
assert hasher.verify_sync("hello", pwd)

Hash migration (Advanced)

If you need to change the hash algorithm (say from PBKDF2 to Argon2), you will typically want to keep support for existing hashes, but rehash them with the new algorithm as soon as possible.

MultiHasher was designed to solve this problem:

from starlette_auth_toolkit.cryptography import Argon2Hasher, PBKDF2Hasher, MultiHasher

hasher = MultiHasher([Argon2Hasher(), PBKDF2Hasher()])

The above hasher will use Argon2 when hashing new passwords, but will be able to verify hashes created using either Argon2 or PBKDF2.

To detect whether a hash needs rehashing, use .needs_update():

valid = await hasher.verify(pwd, pwd_hash)

if hasher.needs_update(pwd_hash):
    new_hash = await hasher.make(pwd)
    # TODO: store new hash

# ...

Note: calling .needs_update() at anytime other than just after calling .verify() will raise a RuntimeError.

Available hashers

Name	Requires	PassLib algorithm
PBKDF2Hasher		pbkdf2_sha256
CryptHasher		sha256_crypt
BCryptHasher	bcrypt	bcrypt
Argon2Hasher	argon2-cffi	argon2
MultiHasher		N/A

For advanced use cases, use Hasher and pass one of the algorithms listed in passlib.hash:

from starlette_auth_toolkit.cryptography import Hasher

hasher = Hasher(algorithm="pbkdf2_sha512")

Authentication helpers

Web applications often need to exchange user credentials (username and password) against the actual user.

Such an exchange is typically implemented as an authenticate utility function:

user = await authenticate(username, password)

Helpers listed here make it easier to build a secure authenticate utility function, which you can then reuse when building your authentication backends.

base.helpers.BaseAuthenticate

Base class for authentication helpers.

Abstract methods

• async .find_user(self, username: str) -> Optional[BaseUser]

  Return the user associated to username, or None if none exist.

• async .verify_password(self, user: BaseUser, password: str) -> bool

  Given a user, check that the given password is valid. For example, compare the given password against the user's password hash.

Methods

• async .__call__(self, username: str, password: str) -> Optional[BaseUser]

  Authenticate a user using the following algorithm:

  1. Find a user using .find_user()
  2. Verify the password using .verify_password()
  3. Return user if it exists and the password is valid, and None otherwise.

contrib.orm.ModelAuthenticate

A ready-to-use implementation of BaseAuthenticate using an orm user model.

Note: orm must be installed to use this helper.

Example

from starlette.applications import Starlette
from starlette_auth_toolkit.contrib.orm import ModelAuthenticate
from starlette_auth_toolkit.cryptography import PBKDF2Hasher

from myproject.models import User  # DIY

hasher = PBKDF2Hasher()
authenticate = ModelAuthenticate(User, hasher=hasher)

app = Starlette()

@app.route("/")
async def home(request):
    data = await request.json()
    username, password = data["username"], data["password"]
    user: User = await authenticate(username, password)
    # ...

Parameters

• model (orm.Model or () -> orm.Model): the user model (or a callable for lazy loading).
• hasher (BaseHasher): a password hasher — the same one used to hash user passwords.
• password_field (str, optional): field where password hashes are stored on user objects. Defaults to "password".

Contributing

Want to contribute? Awesome! Be sure to read our Contributing guidelines.

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md.

License

MIT