=========================================
How to authenticate 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`_, `WebAuth`_,
`mod_auth_sspi`_, etc.

.. _mod_authnz_ldap: https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_authnz_ldap.html
.. _CAS: https://www.apereo.org/projects/cas
.. _WebAuth: https://uit.stanford.edu/service/authentication
.. _mod_auth_sspi: https://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``
or ``PersistentRemoteUserMiddleware``, 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` setting **after** the
:class:`django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware`::

    MIDDLEWARE = [
        "...",
        "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``.

    Users with :attr:`is_active=False
    <django.contrib.auth.models.User.is_active>` won't be allowed to
    authenticate. Use
    :class:`~django.contrib.auth.backends.AllowAllUsersRemoteUserBackend` if
    you want to allow them to.

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:

.. code-block:: python
   :caption: ``mysite/middleware.py``

    from django.contrib.auth.middleware import RemoteUserMiddleware


    class CustomHeaderRemoteUserMiddleware(RemoteUserMiddleware):
        header = "HTTP_AUTHUSER"

This custom middleware is then used in the :setting:`MIDDLEWARE` setting
instead of :class:`django.contrib.auth.middleware.RemoteUserMiddleware`::

    MIDDLEWARE = [
        "...",
        "django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware",
        "mysite.middleware.CustomHeaderRemoteUserMiddleware",
        "...",
    ]

.. 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.

.. _persistent-remote-user-middleware-howto:

Using ``REMOTE_USER`` on login pages only
=========================================

The ``RemoteUserMiddleware`` authentication middleware assumes that the HTTP
request header ``REMOTE_USER`` is present with all authenticated requests. That
might be expected and practical when Basic HTTP Auth with ``htpasswd`` or
similar mechanisms are used, but with Negotiate (GSSAPI/Kerberos) or other
resource intensive authentication methods, the authentication in the front-end
HTTP server is usually only set up for one or a few login URLs, and after
successful authentication, the application is supposed to maintain the
authenticated session itself.

:class:`~django.contrib.auth.middleware.PersistentRemoteUserMiddleware`
provides support for this use case. It will maintain the authenticated session
until explicit logout by the user. The class can be used as a drop-in
replacement of :class:`~django.contrib.auth.middleware.RemoteUserMiddleware`
in the documentation above.
