Making a beta code for a public django site

Question

I'm about to put a beta version of the site I'm working on up on the web. It needs to have a beta code to restrict access. The site is written in django.

I don't want to change the fundamental Auth system to accommodate a beta code, and I don't care particularly that the security of the beta code is iron-clad, just that it's a significant stumbling block.

How should I do this? It's a fairly large project, so adding code to every view is far from ideal.

---

That solution works well. The Middleware Class I ended up with this this:

from django.http import HttpResponseRedirect

class BetaMiddleware(object):
    """
    Require beta code session key in order to view any page.
    """
    def process_request(self, request):
        if request.path != '/beta/' and not request.session.get('in_beta'):
            return HttpResponseRedirect('%s?next=%s' % ('/beta/', request.path))

Answer 1

Start with this Django snippet, but modify it to check request.session['has_beta_access']. If they don't have it, then have it return a redirect to a "enter beta code" page that, when posted to with the right code, sets that session variable to True.

Making it a public beta then just consists of removing that middleware from your MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES setting.

Answer 2

You can probably restrict access to the entire site via apache with htaccess, taking the problem out of the django's project space entirely.