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So I am trying to understand what to do here... I am doing a POST call to my Django server from iOS and I keep getting the 403 Error (Invalid CSRF Token). I am thinking about implementing a function that will return me the token (you will need to be logged in to access that function), and then add the token to my POST call.
Now... I don't understand what is the point of doing that? If I use TastyPie and the required login is APIKey... should I just exempt the csrf check?
To make sure I understand things right... is the CSRF generated per user session? Therefore, if I don't use Cookies, CSRF is not necessary?
How do people usually use their Django Servers with an iOS and making such POST calls?
Thanks!
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The CSRF token is like an alphanumeric code or random secret value that's peculiar to that particular site. Hence, no other site has the same code. In Django, the token is set by CsrfViewMiddleware in the settings.py file. A hidden form field with a csrfmiddlewaretoken field is present in all outgoing requests.
If you're using SessionAuthentication you'll need to include valid CSRF tokens for any POST , PUT , PATCH or DELETE operations. In order to make AJAX requests, you need to include CSRF token in the HTTP header, as described in the Django documentation.
Django has a {% csrf_token %} tag that is implemented to avoid malicious attacks. It generates a token on the server-side when rendering the page and makes sure to cross-check this token for any requests coming back in. If the incoming requests do not contain the token, they are not executed.
For additional safety, the field containing the CSRF token should be placed as early as possible within the HTML document, ideally before any non-hidden input fields and before any locations where user-controllable data is embedded within the HTML.
You're right: if you don't use cookies to manage your sessions, you don't need CSRF protection. CSRF works because session cookies are automatically attached to the request; access tokens are not.
I personally found this article very useful. It is definitely worth reading, and would probably answer a lot of your questions.
As for tastypie: it allows SessionAuthentication. If you allow session authentication in tastypie, I suggest you look into a way to protect your users against CSRF. For other authentication schemes this doesn't seem necessary. As far as I know, Dmitry is right about tastypie disabling CSRF by default, which means it is strange that you get that 403 Error. Perhaps there is something else going on. Try wrapping the view in @csrf_exempt.
As for CSRF tokens, they are also called session independent nonces. They are meant to be permanent, but you probably know that is impossible for cookies. Anyway, this means that CSRF cookies persist through sessions.
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