thirdparty/google_appengine/lib/django/docs/apache_auth.txt
author Daniel Hans <Daniel.M.Hans@gmail.com>
Fri, 07 Aug 2009 01:27:24 +0200
changeset 2736 8f3935f0f4ba
parent 109 620f9b141567
permissions -rw-r--r--
Argument store added to updateEntityProperties. This argument determines if an entity should be stored in the data model after its properties are updated. It may be useful, for example, along with tasks (Task Queue API). One may want to make some modifications to an entity during execution of a task, but the developer is sure that at least one new task, which also wants to modify the entity, will be queued, so he or she can just update the entity without saving the changes to the data model, set the entity in memcache and the following task (which is to be executed very shortly) is to retrive the current entity from the memcache (without any expensive calls to the actual data model).

=========================================================
Authenticating against Django's user database from Apache
=========================================================

Since keeping multiple authentication databases in sync is a common problem when
dealing with Apache, you can configuring Apache to authenticate against Django's
`authentication system`_ directly.  For example, you could:

    * Serve static/media files directly from Apache only to authenticated users.

    * Authenticate access to a Subversion_ repository against Django users with
      a certain permission.

    * Allow certain users to connect to a WebDAV share created with mod_dav_.

Configuring Apache
==================

To check against Django's authorization database from a Apache configuration
file, you'll need to use mod_python's ``PythonAuthenHandler`` directive along
with the standard ``Auth*`` and ``Require`` directives::

    <Location /example/>
        AuthType basic
        AuthName "example.com"
        Require valid-user

        SetEnv DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE mysite.settings
        PythonAuthenHandler django.contrib.auth.handlers.modpython
    </Location>

By default, the authentication handler will limit access to the ``/example/``
location to users marked as staff members.  You can use a set of
``PythonOption`` directives to modify this behavior:

    ================================  =========================================
    ``PythonOption``                  Explanation
    ================================  =========================================
    ``DjangoRequireStaffStatus``      If set to ``on`` only "staff" users (i.e.
                                      those with the ``is_staff`` flag set)
                                      will be allowed.

                                      Defaults to ``on``.

    ``DjangoRequireSuperuserStatus``  If set to ``on`` only superusers (i.e.
                                      those with the ``is_superuser`` flag set)
                                      will be allowed.

                                      Defaults to ``off``.

    ``DjangoPermissionName``          The name of a permission to require for
                                      access. See `custom permissions`_ for
                                      more information.

                                      By default no specific permission will be
                                      required.
    ================================  =========================================

Note that sometimes ``SetEnv`` doesn't play well in this mod_python
configuration, for reasons unknown. If you're having problems getting
mod_python to recognize your ``DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE``, you can set it using
``PythonOption`` instead of ``SetEnv``. Therefore, these two Apache directives
are equivalent::

    SetEnv DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE mysite.settings
    PythonOption DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE mysite.settings

.. _authentication system: ../authentication/
.. _Subversion: http://subversion.tigris.org/
.. _mod_dav: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_dav.html
.. _custom permissions: ../authentication/#custom-permissions