EngineAuth: Multi-Provider Authentication for App Engine

EngineAuth is a standardized approach to third party authentication / authorization, designed to be as simple as possible, both for the developer and the end user.

Disclaimer

Warning

EngineAuth is in the very early stages of development and the api is likely to change frequently and in non-backwards compatible ways. Please provide any issues, suggestions, or general feedback through the Issue Tracker, or in the comments section of this documentation.

Demo

EngineAuth Example - Example site

How it Works

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Supported Strategies & Providers

New strategies will be written as needed. If there’s a particular strategy that your interested in please create a new issues using the strategy request label.

OAuth

  • Twitter

OAuth2

  • Facebook
  • Google

OpenID Provider

  • All - via App Engine OpenID

Email & Password

If the provider that you need isn’t provided not to worry, adding additional providers is simple, and in many cases only requires a few lines of code.

Requirements

  • Google App Engine running Python 2.7

Installation

Copy the engineauth directory and the contents of lib directory to your project’s root directory.

Dependencies

  • ndb - EngineAuth uses features of ndb that are only available in master. This requirement will be removed by after the next sdk update.
  • oauth2client - Required for OAuth2 Strategies
  • httplib2 - Required for OAuth and OAuth2 Strategies
  • uri-templates - Required for OAuth and OAuth2 Strategies
  • python-gflags - Required for OAuth and OAuth2 Strategies
  • python-oauth2 - Required for OAuth Strategies

Configuring EngineAuth

In your appengine_config.py add:

def webapp_add_wsgi_middleware(app):
    from engineauth import middleware
    return middleware.AuthMiddleware(app)

engineauth = {
    'secret_key': 'CHANGE_TO_A_SECRET_KEY',
    'user_model': 'engineauth.models.User',
}

engineauth['provider.auth'] = {
    'user_model': 'engineauth.models.User',
    'session_backend': 'datastore',
}

# Facebook Authentication
engineauth['provider.facebook'] = {
    'client_id': 'CHANGE_TO_FACEBOOK_APP_ID',
    'client_secret': 'CHANGE_TO_FACEBOOK_CLIENT_SECRET',
    'scope': 'email',
}

# Google Plus Authentication
engineauth['provider.google'] = {
    'client_id': 'CHANGE_TO_GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID',
    'client_secret': 'CHANGE_TO_GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET',
    'api_key': 'CHANGE_TO_GOOGLE_API_KEY',
    'scope': 'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/plus.me',
}

# Twitter Authentication
engineauth['provider.twitter'] = {
    'client_id': 'CHAGNE_TO_TWITTER_CONSUMER_KEY',
    'client_secret': 'CHAGNE_TO_TWITTER_CONSUMER_SECRET',
}

Acquiring Client Keys

Facebook

  1. Go to: https://developers.facebook.com/apps
  2. Select your application
  3. Under Select how your app integrates with Facebook click Website. In the Site URL: field enter your domain E.g. http://example.com/ or http://localhost:8080/ be sure to include the closing /.
  4. Copy App ID/API Key as client_id
  5. Copy App Secret as client_secret

Note

Zuckerberg won’t allow you to specify multiple callback domains for a single application. So for development you must create a separate application. Then, in your appengine_config.py you can specify which config will be loaded at runtime.

import os
ON_DEV = os.environ.get('SERVER_SOFTWARE', '').startswith('Dev')
if ON_DEV:
    # Facebook settings for Development
    FACEBOOK_APP_KEY = 'DEVELOPMENT_APP_KEY'
    FACEBOOK_APP_SECRET = 'DEVELOPMENT_APP_SECRET'
else:
    # Facebook settings for Production
    FACEBOOK_APP_KEY = 'PRODUCTION_APP_KEY'
    FACEBOOK_APP_SECRET = 'PRODUCTION_APP_SECRET'
engineauth['provider.facebook'] = {
    'client_id': FACEBOOK_APP_KEY,
    'client_secret': FACEBOOK_APP_SECRET,
    'scope': 'email',
    }

Google Plus

  1. Go to: https://code.google.com/apis/console
  2. Select your application or create a new one.
  3. Choose API Access
  4. Click Create an OAuth 2.0 client ID..
  5. Enter Product name -> Next
  6. Select Web application
  7. Under Your site or host select (more options)
  8. Under Authorized Redirect URIs add your domain name followed by /auth/google/callback E.g. http://localhost:8080/auth/google/callback, http://YOUR_DOMAIN.COM/auth/google/callback
  9. Click Create client ID
  10. Copy Client ID as client_id
  11. Copy Client secret as client_secret

Twitter

  1. Go to: https://dev.twitter.com/apps
  2. Select your application or create a new one.
  3. Make sure the you set the callback to http://YOUR_DOMAIN.COM/auth/twitter/callback. It’s fine to set this to your production url, EngineAuth passes a redirect url while authenticating so there’s no need to specify localhost:8080 here.
  4. Go to Details OAuth settings
  5. Copy Consumer key as client_id
  6. Copy Consumer secret as client_secret

LinkedIn

  1. Go to: https://www.linkedin.com/secure/developer?newapp
  2. Fill in required fileds. You may leave OAuth Redirect URL: blank.
  3. Click Add Application
  4. Copy API Key as client_id
  5. Copy Secret Key as client_secret
  6. Click Done

Github

  1. Go to: https://github.com/account/applications/new
  2. Fill in required fileds. For Callback URL enter ``http://YOUR_DOMAIN.COM/auth/github/callback`
  3. Click Create Application
  4. Copy Client ID as client_id
  5. Copy Secret as client_secret
  6. Click Done

App Engine OpenID

  1. Go to: https://appengine.google.com
  2. Select your application
  3. Choose Application Settings
  4. Choose (Experimental Federated Login) from the Authentication Options drop down
  5. Click Save

Objectives

User

When beginning any new web application, that involves users, you’ve probably asked yourself:

  • How can I verify my user’s identities?
  • How do I protect their privacy?
  • How can I make the signup process as simple as possible?
  • How do I save my user from entering their information on yet another sight?
  • How can I leverage the wealth of information that my users have entered into third party sights?

Which brings us to:

Note

Objective #1

Provide a clear path for Authentication / Authorization, that is secure, simple to use, and allows users to share their information, effortlessly.

Developer

And from a development standpoint you’ve probably ask:

  • How can I save myself from writing yet another authentication strategy?
  • As developers why are we all writing the same code, over and over again?
  • How can I share what I’ve learn with others?

Which brings us to:

Note

Objective #2

The solution should be easy to implement, and easy to extend and share.

Credits

EngineAuth brings together ideas and code from many projects:

License

EngineAuth is licensed under the Apache License 2.0.

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