Basic authentication in Django

Published December 12, 2022 | By scott.greenough

Basic authentication is a method for requiring a username and password in order to access a web application. It is commonly used in web applications built with the Django web framework.

To enable basic authentication in Django, you first need to install the django-basicauth package using pip:

pip install django-basicauth

Once the package is installed, you can use it by adding the following middleware to your Django project’s MIDDLEWARE setting:

MIDDLEWARE = [    ...,    'basicauth.BasicAuthMiddleware',    ...,]

Next, you need to add the username and password that you want to use for basic authentication to your Django project’s BASIC_AUTH_USERNAME and BASIC_AUTH_PASSWORD settings, respectively:

BASIC_AUTH_USERNAME = 'myusername'

BASIC_AUTH_PASSWORD = 'mypassword'

With these settings in place, any request to your Django web application will now require the specified username and password in order to be authenticated.

It’s important to note that basic authentication is not a very secure method of authentication, and should only be used in situations where the application and its data are not sensitive. For more secure authentication, it’s recommended to use a more robust authentication method, such as OAuth or JSON Web Tokens.