user_manager

About

This is a Django app that integrates well with the CHI_AUTH tool (though it doesn’t require the CHI_AUTH tool to use). There are a few possible configurations:

• normal Django local login
  • not much benefit over normal Django user system
• local login integration with CHI_AUTH
  • allows users to log in with their UC or CHI credentials
• CHI_AUTH login
  • all login is handled by CHI_AUTH and credentials are passed to this application through nginx as HTTP headers

Using with django_startup

I already have a django_startup project template that’s already configured to integrate this. That is the easiest way to get started.

See the django_startup documentation, examples, as well as my obisidian “workflow_deploy_django_project” for how to configure everything.

Using with a new django project from scratch

Download the code from GitHub using pip

pip install git+https://github.com/Center-for-Health-Informatics/django_user_manager.git@v1.2.0#egg=django_user_manager

or add to a requirements.txt file

git+https://github.com/Center-for-Health-Informatics/django_user_manager.git@v1.2.0#egg=django_user_manager

Add user_manager app to your installed apps

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    'user_manager',
]

Set the user manager model as your User model

AUTH_USER_MODEL = "user_manager.User"

Select the authentication backends you want to use

# select auth backends to use when authenticating inside the app for development
# the following will first try local authentication, then try CHI Auth authentication
# checking both CHI Accounts and UC AD Accounts. On successful CHI Auth authentication,
# the local user will be created if they don’t exist yet.
AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS = [
    "django.contrib.auth.backends.ModelBackend",
    "user_manager.authentication_backends.ChiAuthBackend",
]

Define an abstract user

• You need to define an abstract user model on path project.abstract_user_model.AbstractCustomUser.
• user_manager will use this as the base to create a concrete user model

from django.contrib.auth.models import AbstractUser

class AbstractCustomUser(AbstractUser):
    # add any custom fields or methods you want

    class Meta:       abstract = True

Add to urls.py

path('user_manager/', include( ('user_manager.urls', 'user_manager'), namespace='user_manager') ),

Customize the behavior of CHI_AUTH. These values can be set in the host project’s settings.py or in the process environment.

# if using CHI AUTH, what is the root URL for the system
CHI_AUTH_URL = "https://chi.uc.edu/auth/"

# you need to provide an access token if using CHI_Auth
CHI_AUTH_API_ACCESS_TOKEN = "🤫"

# Which CHI_AUTH systems do you want to use for authentication?
# ucad is UC Active Directory, local is CHI_AUTH credentials for non-UC users
CHI_AUTH_CHECK_SYSTEMS = 'local, ucad'

# if user authenticates through CHI_AUTH but doesn't exist locally, create new user?
CHI_AUTH_AUTOCREATE_LOCAL_USER = True

# new users created locally should automatically generate new user in CHI_AUTH
CHI_AUTH_AUTOCREATE_CHI_AUTH_USER = False

Set login/logout paths

• this example is for local login, you could also configure it to use the CHI_AUTH login views

# this url gets called when @login_required view is accessed
LOGIN_URL = '/user_manager/login'

# use as a sign in link <a href="{{ LOGIN_URL_FOR_LINK }}">Sign In</a>
LOGIN_URL_FOR_LINK = '/user_manager/login'

# use as a sign out link <a href="{{ LOGOUT_URL_FOR_LINK }}">Sign Out</a>
LOGOUT_URL_FOR_LINK = '/user_manager/logout'

Customize specifics

# what to display for, “Sign in to: _______”
SITE_TITLE = "Center for Health Informatics"

# who to email for help
CONTACT_EMAIL = "combmichi@uc.edu"

# where to change a UC password
UC_PASSWORD_MANAGER_URL = "https://www.uc.edu/sspr"

Dependencies

Depends on resources from CHI Assets to display its login form. Specifically:

• favicon.ico
• login.css
  • opensans.css
  • care_crawley.jpg

There are no other external dependencies (e.g. Bootstrap, jQuery, Font Awesome, etc.). Does not depend on particular templates existing in the host project.