If you will have a look at OAuth examples on twitter apiwiki there are already examples available to use Sign in with Twitter with Django, so why this new howto and example code. Because being a perfectionist I like things to be the standard way, so for authentication django allows you to specify your own customized authentication backends. I thought why should not that be utilized to authenticate the Django User object with twitter.
There are few pre-requisites listed below in the order they are needed:
- simplejson
- oauth
- python-twitter
- oauth-python-twitter
- TwitterBackend from djangosnippets.org
This guide assumes that simplejson, oauth, python-twitter and oauth-python-twitter are already on your python path.
1. Now create a new Django project: twitterapp
django-admin startproject
2. Change to the project directory.
3. Now start a new app inside the project
python manage.py startapp twitterauth
4. Create a new directory: backends
mkdir backends
5. Change to the backends directory and create 2 new empty files.
cd backends
touch __init__.py
touch twitteroauth.py
6. Copy the code from TwitterBackend into the empty file: twitteroauth.py
7. Now configure your settings.py and add/edit following configuration variables
CONSUMER_KEY = "Your consumer key from twitter"
CONSUMER_SECRET = "You consumer secret from twitter"
AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS = (
'backends.twitteroauth.TwitterBackend',
'django.contrib.auth.backends.ModelBackend',
)
AUTH_PROFILE_MODULE = "twitterauth.UserProfile"
8. Now goto the twitterauth app directory and create a UserProfile module and post save signal processor as follows:
from django.db import models from django.db.models.signals import post_save from django.contrib.auth.models import User class UserProfile(models.Model): user = models.ForeignKey(User) access_token = models.CharField(max_length=255, blank=True, null=True, editable=False) profile_image_url = models.URLField(blank=True, null=True) location = models.CharField(max_length=100, blank=True, null=True) url = models.URLField(blank=True, null=True) description = models.CharField(max_length=160, blank=True, null=True) def __str__(self): return "%s's profile" % self.user def create_user_profile(sender, instance, created, **kwargs): if created: profile, created = UserProfile.objects.get_or_create(user=instance) post_save.connect(create_user_profile, sender=User)
9. Now modify your views.py in twitterauth app directory as following:
from django.conf import settings
from django.http import HttpResponseRedirect, HttpResponse
from django.contrib.auth import login, authenticate
from oauthtwitter import OAuthApi
import oauth
CONSUMER_KEY = getattr(settings, 'CONSUMER_KEY', 'YOUR_KEY')
CONSUMER_SECRET = getattr(settings, 'CONSUMER_SECRET', 'YOUR_SECRET')
def twitter_signin(request):
twitter = OAuthApi(CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET)
request_token = twitter.getRequestToken()
request.session['request_token'] = request_token.to_string()
signin_url = twitter.getSigninURL(request_token)
return HttpResponseRedirect(signin_url)
def twitter_return(request):
request_token = request.session.get('request_token', None)
# If there is no request_token for session,
# means we didn't redirect user to twitter
if not request_token:
# Redirect the user to the login page,
# So the user can click on the sign-in with twitter button
return HttpResponse("We didn't redirect you to twitter...")
token = oauth.OAuthToken.from_string(request_token)
# If the token from session and token from twitter does not match
# means something bad happened to tokens
if token.key != request.GET.get('oauth_token', 'no-token'):
del request.session['request_token']
# Redirect the user to the login page
return HttpResponse("Something wrong! Tokens do not match...")
twitter = OAuthApi(CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET, token)
access_token = twitter.getAccessToken()
request.session['access_token'] = access_token.to_string()
auth_user = authenticate(access_token=access_token)
# if user is authenticated then login user
if auth_user:
login(request, auth_user)
else:
# We were not able to authenticate user
# Redirect to login page
del request.session['access_token']
del request.session['request_token']
return HttpResponse("Unable to authenticate you!")
# authentication was successful, use is now logged in
return HttpResponse("You are logged in")
10. Add the following 2 lines to urls.py at correct location.
url('^login/$', twitter_signin, name='login'),
url('^return/$', twitter_return, name='return'),
11. Now start the django devevelopment server
python manage.py runserver
12. Goto http://localhost:8000/login and you will be redirected to user for authentication, and if everything wents well you will see the message that your are logged in.
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