Can I use HTTP Basic Authentication with Django?

Question

We have a website running on Apache, access to which has a number of static pages protected via HTTP Basic authentication.

I've written a new part of the site with Django using Django's built in support for user management.

The problem I have is that users have to log in once via the HTTP Basic authentication and then again using a Django login form. This both clumsy and very confusing for users.

I was wondering if anyone had found a way to make Django log a user in using the HTTP Basic authentication information.

I not expecting to pass a password to Django, but rather if a user dave has been authenticated by Apache then they should be automatically logged into Django as dave too.

(One option would be to make Apache and Django share a user store to ensure common usernames and passwords but this would still involve two login prompts which is what I'm trying to avoid.)

Answer 1

For just supporting basic auth on some requests (and not mucking with the web server -- which is how someone might interpret your question title), you will want to look here:

http://www.djangosnippets.org/snippets/243/