Reference

Settings

AUTH_LDAP_ALWAYS_UPDATE_USER

Default: True

If True, the fields of a User object will be updated with the latest values from the LDAP directory every time the user logs in. Otherwise the User object will only be populated when it is automatically created.

AUTH_LDAP_AUTHORIZE_ALL_USERS

Default: False

If True, LDAPBackend will be able furnish permissions for any Django user, regardless of which backend authenticated it.

AUTH_LDAP_BIND_AS_AUTHENTICATING_USER

Default: False

If True, authentication will leave the LDAP connection bound as the authenticating user, rather than forcing it to re-bind with the default credentials after authentication succeeds. This may be desirable if you do not have global credentials that are able to access the user’s attributes. django-auth-ldap never stores the user’s password, so this only applies to requests where the user is authenticated. Thus, the downside to this setting is that LDAP results may vary based on whether the user was authenticated earlier in the Django view, which could be surprising to code not directly concerned with authentication.

AUTH_LDAP_BIND_DN

Default: '' (Empty string)

The distinguished name to use when binding to the LDAP server (with AUTH_LDAP_BIND_PASSWORD). Use the empty string (the default) for an anonymous bind. To authenticate a user, we will bind with that user’s DN and password, but for all other LDAP operations, we will be bound as the DN in this setting. For example, if AUTH_LDAP_USER_DN_TEMPLATE is not set, we’ll use this to search for the user. If AUTH_LDAP_FIND_GROUP_PERMS is True, we’ll also use it to determine group membership.

AUTH_LDAP_BIND_PASSWORD

Default: '' (Empty string)

The password to use with AUTH_LDAP_BIND_DN.

AUTH_LDAP_CACHE_TIMEOUT

Default: 0

The value determines the amount of time, in seconds, a user’s group memberships and distinguished name are cached. The value 0, the default, disables caching entirely.

AUTH_LDAP_CONNECTION_OPTIONS

Default: {}

A dictionary of options to pass to each connection to the LDAP server via LDAPObject.set_option(). Keys are ldap.OPT_* constants.

AUTH_LDAP_DENY_GROUP

Default: None

The distinguished name of a group; authentication will fail for any user that belongs to this group.

AUTH_LDAP_FIND_GROUP_PERMS

Default: False

If True, LDAPBackend looks up Django Groups matching LDAP group names, and assigns user permissions based on the Django Group permissions.

AUTH_LDAP_GROUP_SEARCH and AUTH_LDAP_GROUP_TYPE must also be set.

Important

Users will not be added to the Django Group. The LDAP groups remain the source of truth for group membership.

AUTH_LDAP_GLOBAL_OPTIONS

Default: {}

A dictionary of options to pass to ldap.set_option(). Keys are ldap.OPT_* constants.

Note

Due to its global nature, this setting ignores the settings prefix. Regardless of how many backends are installed, this setting is referenced once by its default name at the time we load the ldap module.

AUTH_LDAP_GROUP_TYPE

Default: None

An LDAPGroupType instance describing the type of group returned by AUTH_LDAP_GROUP_SEARCH.

AUTH_LDAP_MIRROR_GROUPS

Default: None

If True, LDAPBackend will mirror a user’s LDAP group membership in the Django database. Any time a user authenticates through the LDAPBackend, we will create all of their LDAP groups as Django groups and update their Django group membership to exactly match their LDAP group membership. If the LDAP server has nested groups, the Django database will end up with a flattened representation.

This can also be a list or other collection of group names, in which case we’ll only mirror those groups and leave the rest alone. This is ignored if AUTH_LDAP_MIRROR_GROUPS_EXCEPT is set.

Note

Users authenticating through another authentication backend, such as ModelBackend will not have their group membership and permissions refreshed from the LDAP server.

AUTH_LDAP_MIRROR_GROUPS_EXCEPT

Default: None

If this is not None, it must be a list or other collection of group names. This will enable group mirroring, except that we’ll never change the membership of the indicated groups. AUTH_LDAP_MIRROR_GROUPS is ignored in this case.

AUTH_LDAP_PERMIT_EMPTY_PASSWORD

Default: False

If False (the default), authentication with an empty password will fail immediately, without any LDAP communication. This is a secure default, as some LDAP servers are configured to allow binds to succeed with no password, perhaps at a reduced level of access. If you need to make use of this LDAP feature, you can change this setting to True.

AUTH_LDAP_REQUIRE_GROUP

Default: None

The distinguished name of a group; authentication will fail for any user that does not belong to this group. This can also be an LDAPGroupQuery instance.

AUTH_LDAP_NO_NEW_USERS

Default: False

Prevent the creation of new users during authentication. Any users not already in the Django user database will not be able to login.

AUTH_LDAP_SERVER_URI

Default: 'ldap://localhost'

The URI of the LDAP server. This can be any URI that is supported by your underlying LDAP libraries. Can also be a callable that returns the URI. The callable is passed a single positional argument: request.

Changed in version 1.7.0: When AUTH_LDAP_SERVER_URI is set to a callable, it is now passed a positional request argument. Support for no arguments will continue for backwards compatibility but will be removed in a future version.

AUTH_LDAP_START_TLS

Default: False

If True, each connection to the LDAP server will call start_tls_s() to enable TLS encryption over the standard LDAP port. There are a number of configuration options that can be given to AUTH_LDAP_GLOBAL_OPTIONS that affect the TLS connection. For example, ldap.OPT_X_TLS_REQUIRE_CERT can be set to ldap.OPT_X_TLS_NEVER to disable certificate verification, perhaps to allow self-signed certificates.

AUTH_LDAP_USER_QUERY_FIELD

Default: None

The field on the user model used to query the authenticating user in the database. If unset, uses the value of USERNAME_FIELD of the model class. When set, the value used to query is obtained through the AUTH_LDAP_USER_ATTR_MAP. For example, setting AUTH_LDAP_USER_QUERY_FIELD to username and adding "username": "sAMAccountName", to AUTH_LDAP_USER_ATTR_MAP will cause django to query local database using username column and LDAP using sAMAccountName attribute.

AUTH_LDAP_USER_ATTRLIST

Default: None

A list of attribute names to load for the authenticated user. Normally, you can ignore this and the LDAP server will send back all of the attributes of the directory entry. One reason you might need to override this is to get operational attributes, which are not normally included:

AUTH_LDAP_USER_ATTRLIST = ["*", "+"]

AUTH_LDAP_USER_ATTR_MAP

Default: {}

A mapping from User field names to LDAP attribute names. A users’s User object will be populated from his LDAP attributes at login.

AUTH_LDAP_USER_DN_TEMPLATE

Default: None

A string template that describes any user’s distinguished name based on the username. This must contain the placeholder %(user)s.

AUTH_LDAP_USER_FLAGS_BY_GROUP

Default: {}

A mapping from boolean User field names to distinguished names of LDAP groups. The corresponding field is set to True or False according to whether the user is a member of the group.

Values may be strings for simple group membership tests or LDAPGroupQuery instances for more complex cases.

Module Properties

django_auth_ldap.version

The library’s current version number as a 3-tuple.

django_auth_ldap.version_string

The library’s current version number as a string.

Configuration

class django_auth_ldap.config.LDAPSearch
__init__(base_dn, scope, filterstr='(objectClass=*)')
Parameters

  • base_dn (str) – The distinguished name of the search base.

  • scope (int) – One of ldap.SCOPE_*.

  • filterstr (str) – An optional filter string (e.g. ‘(objectClass=person)’). In order to be valid, filterstr must be enclosed in parentheses.

class django_auth_ldap.config.LDAPSearchUnion

New in version 1.1.

__init__(\*searches)
Parameters

searches (LDAPSearch) – Zero or more LDAPSearch objects. The result of the overall search is the union (by DN) of the results of the underlying searches. The precedence of the underlying results and the ordering of the final results are both undefined.

class django_auth_ldap.config.LDAPGroupType

The base class for objects that will determine group membership for various LDAP grouping mechanisms. Implementations are provided for common group types or you can write your own. See the source code for subclassing notes.

__init__(name_attr='cn')

By default, LDAP groups will be mapped to Django groups by taking the first value of the cn attribute. You can specify a different attribute with name_attr.

class django_auth_ldap.config.PosixGroupType

A concrete subclass of LDAPGroupType that handles the posixGroup object class. This checks for both primary group and group membership.

__init__(name_attr='cn')
class django_auth_ldap.config.MemberDNGroupType

A concrete subclass of LDAPGroupType that handles grouping mechanisms wherein the group object contains a list of its member DNs.

__init__(member_attr, name_attr='cn')
Parameters

member_attr (str) – The attribute on the group object that contains a list of member DNs. ‘member’ and ‘uniqueMember’ are common examples.

class django_auth_ldap.config.NestedMemberDNGroupType

Similar to MemberDNGroupType, except this allows groups to contain other groups as members. Group hierarchies will be traversed to determine membership.

__init__(member_attr, name_attr='cn')

As above.

class django_auth_ldap.config.GroupOfNamesType

A concrete subclass of MemberDNGroupType that handles the groupOfNames object class. Equivalent to MemberDNGroupType('member').

__init__(name_attr='cn')
class django_auth_ldap.config.NestedGroupOfNamesType

A concrete subclass of NestedMemberDNGroupType that handles the groupOfNames object class. Equivalent to NestedMemberDNGroupType('member').

__init__(name_attr='cn')
class django_auth_ldap.config.GroupOfUniqueNamesType

A concrete subclass of MemberDNGroupType that handles the groupOfUniqueNames object class. Equivalent to MemberDNGroupType('uniqueMember').

__init__(name_attr='cn')
class django_auth_ldap.config.NestedGroupOfUniqueNamesType

A concrete subclass of NestedMemberDNGroupType that handles the groupOfUniqueNames object class. Equivalent to NestedMemberDNGroupType('uniqueMember').

__init__(name_attr='cn')
class django_auth_ldap.config.ActiveDirectoryGroupType

A concrete subclass of MemberDNGroupType that handles Active Directory groups. Equivalent to MemberDNGroupType('member').

__init__(name_attr='cn')
class django_auth_ldap.config.NestedActiveDirectoryGroupType

A concrete subclass of NestedMemberDNGroupType that handles Active Directory groups. Equivalent to NestedMemberDNGroupType('member').

__init__(name_attr='cn')
class django_auth_ldap.config.OrganizationalRoleGroupType

A concrete subclass of MemberDNGroupType that handles the organizationalRole object class. Equivalent to MemberDNGroupType('roleOccupant').

__init__(name_attr='cn')
class django_auth_ldap.config.NestedOrganizationalRoleGroupType

A concrete subclass of NestedMemberDNGroupType that handles the organizationalRole object class. Equivalent to NestedMemberDNGroupType('roleOccupant').

__init__(name_attr='cn')
class django_auth_ldap.config.LDAPGroupQuery

Represents a compound query for group membership.

This can be used to construct an arbitrarily complex group membership query with AND, OR, and NOT logical operators. Construct primitive queries with a group DN as the only argument. These queries can then be combined with the &, |, and ~ operators.

This is used by certain settings, including AUTH_LDAP_REQUIRE_GROUP and AUTH_LDAP_USER_FLAGS_BY_GROUP. An example is shown in Limiting Access.

__init__(group_dn)
Parameters

group_dn (str) – The distinguished name of a group to test for membership.

Backend

django_auth_ldap.backend.populate_user

This is a Django signal that is sent when clients should perform additional customization of a User object. It is sent after a user has been authenticated and the backend has finished populating it, and just before it is saved. The client may take this opportunity to populate additional model fields, perhaps based on ldap_user.attrs. This signal has two keyword arguments: user is the User object and ldap_user is the same as user.ldap_user. The sender is the LDAPBackend class.

django_auth_ldap.backend.ldap_error

This is a Django signal that is sent when we receive an ldap.LDAPError exception. The signal has four keyword arguments:

  • context: one of 'authenticate', 'get_group_permissions', or 'populate_user', indicating which API was being called when the exception was caught.

  • user: the Django user being processed (if available).

  • request: the Django request object associated with the authentication attempt (if available).

  • exception: the LDAPError object itself.

The sender is the LDAPBackend class (or subclass).

class django_auth_ldap.backend.LDAPBackend

LDAPBackend has one method that may be called directly and several that may be overridden in subclasses.

settings_prefix

A prefix for all of our Django settings. By default, this is 'AUTH_LDAP_', but subclasses can override this. When different subclasses use different prefixes, they can both be installed and operate independently.

default_settings

A dictionary of default settings. This is empty in LDAPBackend, but subclasses can populate this with values that will override the built-in defaults. Note that the keys should omit the 'AUTH_LDAP_' prefix.

populate_user(username)

Populates the Django user for the given LDAP username. This connects to the LDAP directory with the default credentials and attempts to populate the indicated Django user as if they had just logged in. AUTH_LDAP_ALWAYS_UPDATE_USER is ignored (assumed True).

get_user_model(self)

Returns the user model that get_or_build_user() will instantiate. By default, custom user models will be respected. Subclasses would most likely override this in order to substitute a proxy model.

authenticate_ldap_user(self, ldap_user, password)

Given an LDAP user object and password, authenticates the user and returns a Django user object. See Customizing Authentication.

get_or_build_user(self, username, ldap_user)

Given a username and an LDAP user object, this must return a valid Django user model instance. The username argument has already been passed through ldap_to_django_username(). You can get information about the LDAP user via ldap_user.dn and ldap_user.attrs. The return value must be an (instance, created) two-tuple. The instance does not need to be saved.

The default implementation looks for the username with a case-insensitive query; if it’s not found, the model returned by get_user_model() will be created with the lowercased username. New users will not be saved to the database until after the django_auth_ldap.backend.populate_user signal has been sent.

A subclass may override this to associate LDAP users to Django users any way it likes.

ldap_to_django_username(username)

Returns a valid Django username based on the given LDAP username (which is what the user enters). By default, username is returned unchanged. This can be overridden by subclasses.

django_to_ldap_username(username)

The inverse of ldap_to_django_username(). If this is not symmetrical to ldap_to_django_username(), the behavior is undefined.