Authnzerver

Authnzerver is a tiny authentication (authn) and authorization (authz) server implemented in Python and the Tornado web framework.

I wrote it to help with the login/logout/signup flows for the Light Curve Collection Server and extracted much of the code from there. It builds on the auth bits there and is eventually meant to replace them. It can do the following things:

• Handle user sign-ups, logins, logouts, and locks/unlocks.
• Handle user email verification, password changes, forgotten password processes, and editing user properties.
• Handle API key issuance and verification.
• Handle access and rate-limit checks for arbitrary schemes of user roles, permissions, and target items. There is a default scheme of permissions and user roles, originally from the LCC-Server where this code was extracted from. A custom permissions policy can be specified as JSON.

Authnzerver talks to a frontend server over HTTP. Communications are secured with symmetric encryption using the cryptography package’s Fernet scheme, so you’ll need a pre-shared key that both Authnzerver and your frontend server know.

See the HTTP API docs for details on how to call Authnzerver from a frontend service.

Installation

Installing with pip

Install authnzerver (preferably in a virtualenv):

(venv)$ pip install authnzerver

Installing the latest version from Github

To install the latest version (may be unstable at times):

$ git clone https://github.com/waqasbhatti/authnzerver
$ cd authnzerver
$ python setup.py install
$ # or use pip install . to install requirements automatically
$ # or use pip install -e . to install in develop mode along with requirements

Installing the container from Docker Hub

Pull the image:

docker pull waqasbhatti/authnzerver:latest

Using the server

See the server configuration and usage docs on how to configure the server with environment variables or command-line options, and run it either as a Docker container or as script executable from the Python package.

Quick start

If you have authnzerver installed as a Python package in an activated virtualenv:

authnzrv --autosetup --basedir=$(PWD)

If you’re running it as a Docker container:

docker run -p 13431:13431 -v $(PWD):/home/authnzerver/basedir \
  --rm -it waqasbhatti/authnzerver:latest \
  --autosetup --basedir=/home/authnzerver/basedir

Documentation

• Running the server
  • Configuring the authnzerver
  • Setting the administrator password
  • List of all configuration items
  • Retrieving configuration items
  • Launching the authnzerver
• Permissions policy enforcement
  • Permissions policy definition
  • Using a permissions policy
  • The default permissions policy
• Authnzerver HTTP API
  • Using the API Client
  • Constructing API Requests manually
  • Session handling
  • User handling
  • Password handling
  • Authorization actions
  • Email actions
  • API key actions
  • Internal actions
• Python modules
  • authnzerver package

Changelog and TODO

Please see CHANGELOG.md in the Github repository for the latest changelog for tagged versions.

Similarly, please see TODO.md in the Github repository for items being worked on or in the pipeline for future versions.

License

Authnzerver is provided under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for the full text.

Indices and tables

• Index
• Module Index
• Search Page