Installation

Install the package with pip:

$ pip install django-auth-ldap

It requires python-ldap >= 3.0. You’ll need the OpenLDAP libraries and headers available on your system.

To use the auth backend in a Django project, add 'django_auth_ldap.backend.LDAPBackend' to AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS. Do not add anything to INSTALLED_APPS.

AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS = ["django_auth_ldap.backend.LDAPBackend"]

LDAPBackend should work with custom user models, but it does assume that a database is present.

Note

LDAPBackend does not inherit from ModelBackend. It is possible to use LDAPBackend exclusively by configuring it to draw group membership from the LDAP server. However, if you would like to assign permissions to individual users or add users to groups within Django, you’ll need to have both backends installed:

AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS = [
    "django_auth_ldap.backend.LDAPBackend",
    "django.contrib.auth.backends.ModelBackend",
]

Django will check each authentication backend in order, so you are free to reorder these if checking ModelBackend first is more applicable to your application.