====================================
Authentication using ``REMOTE_USER``
====================================

This document describes how to make use of external authentication sources
(where the Web server sets the ``REMOTE_USER`` environment variable) in your
Django applications.  This type of authentication solution is typically seen on
intranet sites, with single sign-on solutions such as IIS and Integrated
Windows Authentication or Apache and `mod_authnz_ldap`_, `CAS`_, `Cosign`_,
`WebAuth`_, `mod_auth_sspi`_, etc.

.. _mod_authnz_ldap: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_authnz_ldap.html
.. _CAS: https://www.apereo.org/cas
.. _Cosign: http://weblogin.org
.. _WebAuth: http://www.stanford.edu/services/webauth/
.. _mod_auth_sspi: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mod-auth-sspi

When the Web server takes care of authentication it typically sets the
``REMOTE_USER`` environment variable for use in the underlying application.  In
Django, ``REMOTE_USER`` is made available in the :attr:`request.META
<django.http.HttpRequest.META>` attribute.  Django can be configured to make
use of the ``REMOTE_USER`` value using the ``RemoteUserMiddleware`` and
:class:`~django.contrib.auth.backends.RemoteUserBackend` classes found in
:mod:`django.contrib.auth`.

Configuration
=============

First, you must add the
:class:`django.contrib.auth.middleware.RemoteUserMiddleware` to the
:setting:`MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES` setting **after** the
:class:`django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware`::

    MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = (
        '...',
        'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware',
        'django.contrib.auth.middleware.RemoteUserMiddleware',
        '...',
    )

Next, you must replace the :class:`~django.contrib.auth.backends.ModelBackend`
with :class:`~django.contrib.auth.backends.RemoteUserBackend` in the
:setting:`AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS` setting::

    AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS = (
        'django.contrib.auth.backends.RemoteUserBackend',
    )

With this setup, ``RemoteUserMiddleware`` will detect the username in
``request.META['REMOTE_USER']`` and will authenticate and auto-login that user
using the :class:`~django.contrib.auth.backends.RemoteUserBackend`.

Be aware that this particular setup disables authentication with the default
``ModelBackend``. This means that if the ``REMOTE_USER`` value is not set
then the user is unable to log in, even using Django's admin interface.
Adding ``'django.contrib.auth.backends.ModelBackend'`` to the
``AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS`` list will use ``ModelBackend`` as a fallback
if ``REMOTE_USER`` is absent, which will solve these issues.

Django's user management, such as the views in ``contrib.admin`` and
the :djadmin:`createsuperuser` management command, doesn't integrate with
remote users. These interfaces work with users stored in the database
regardless of ``AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS``.

.. note::
   Since the ``RemoteUserBackend`` inherits from ``ModelBackend``, you will
   still have all of the same permissions checking that is implemented in
   ``ModelBackend``.

If your authentication mechanism uses a custom HTTP header and not
``REMOTE_USER``, you can subclass ``RemoteUserMiddleware`` and set the
``header`` attribute to the desired ``request.META`` key.  For example::

    from django.contrib.auth.middleware import RemoteUserMiddleware

    class CustomHeaderMiddleware(RemoteUserMiddleware):
        header = 'HTTP_AUTHUSER'

.. warning::

    Be very careful if using a ``RemoteUserMiddleware`` subclass with a custom
    HTTP header. You must be sure that your front-end web server always sets or
    strips that header based on the appropriate authentication checks, never
    permitting an end-user to submit a fake (or "spoofed") header value. Since
    the HTTP headers ``X-Auth-User`` and ``X-Auth_User`` (for example) both
    normalize to the ``HTTP_X_AUTH_USER`` key in ``request.META``, you must
    also check that your web server doesn't allow a spoofed header using
    underscores in place of dashes.

    This warning doesn't apply to ``RemoteUserMiddleware`` in its default
    configuration with ``header = 'REMOTE_USER'``, since a key that doesn't
    start with ``HTTP_`` in ``request.META`` can only be set by your WSGI
    server, not directly from an HTTP request header.

If you need more control, you can create your own authentication backend
that inherits from :class:`~django.contrib.auth.backends.RemoteUserBackend` and
override one or more of its attributes and methods.