2.8 KiB
Authentication
FastAPI Users allows you to plug in several authentication methods.
How it works?
You can have several authentication methods, e.g. a cookie authentication for browser-based queries and a JWT token authentication for pure API queries.
When checking authentication, each method is run one after the other. The first method yielding a user wins. If no method yields a user, an HTTPException is raised.
For each backend, you'll be able to add a router with the corresponding /login and /logout. More on this in the routers documentation.
Transport + Strategy = Authentication backend
An authentication backend is composed of two parts:
Transport
It manages how the token will be carried over the request. We currently provide two methods:
Bearer
The token will be send through an Authorization: Bearer header.
!!! tip "Pros and cons"
* ✅ Easy to read and set in every requests.
* ❌ Needs to be stored manually somewhere in the client.
➡️ Use it if you want to implement a mobile application or a pure REST API.
Cookie
The token will be send through a cookie.
!!! tip "Pros and cons"
* ✅ Automatically stored and sent securely by web browsers in every requests.
* ✅ Automatically removed at expiration by web browsers.
* ❌ Needs a CSRF protection for maximum security.
* ❌ Harder to work with outside a browser, like a mobile app or a server.
➡️ Use it if you want to implement a web frontend.
Strategy
It manages how the token is generated and secured. We currently provide two methods:
JWT
The token is self-contained in a JSON Web Token.
!!! tip "Pros and cons"
* ✅ Self-contained: it doesn't need to be stored in a database.
* ❌ Can't be invalidated on the server-side: it's valid until it expires.
➡️ Use it if you want to get up-and-running quickly.
Database
The token is stored in a table (or collection) in your database.
!!! tip "Pros and cons"
* ✅ Secure and performant.
* ✅ Tokens can be invalidated server-side by removing them from the database.
* ✅ Highly customizable: add your own fields, create an API to retrieve the active sessions of your users, etc.
* ❌ Configuration is a bit more complex.
➡️ Use it if you want maximum flexibility in your token management.
Redis
The token is stored in a Redis key-store.
!!! tip "Pros and cons"
* ✅ Secure and performant.
* ✅ Tokens can be invalidated server-side by removing them from Redis.
* ❌ A Redis server is needed.
➡️ Use it if you want maximum performance while being able to invalidate tokens.