pyramid_ldap3¶

Overview¶

pyramid_ldap3 provides LDAP authentication services for your Pyramid application. It is a fork of the pyramid_ldap package with the goal of eliminating the dependency on python-ldap and ldappool, replacing it with a dependency on ldap3, which is a pure Python package that supports both Python 2 and Python 3.

Installation¶

pyramid_ldap3 depends on the pyramid and ldap3 packages. When you install pyramid_ldap3 using pip (usually within a virtual environment), these dependencies will be installed automatically as well:

$ pip install pyramid_ldap3

Setup¶

Once pyramid_ldap3 is installed, you must use the config.include mechanism to include it into your Pyramid project’s configuration. In your Pyramid project’s __init__.py:

config = Configurator(.....)
config.include('pyramid_ldap3')

Alternately, instead of using the Configurator’s include method, you can activate Pyramid by changing your application’s .ini file, use the following line:

pyramid.includes = pyramid_ldap3

Once you’ve included pyramid_ldap3, you have to call methods of the Configurator to tell it about your LDAP server and query particulars. Here’s an example of calling methods to create a fully-configured LDAP setup that attempts to talk to an Active Directory server:

import ldap3

config = Configurator()

config.include('pyramid_ldap3')

config.ldap_setup(
    'ldap://ldap.example.com',
    bind='CN=ldap user,CN=Users,DC=example,DC=com',
    passwd='ld@pu5er')

config.ldap_set_login_query(
    base_dn='CN=Users,DC=example,DC=com',
    filter_tmpl='(sAMAccountName=%(login)s)',
    scope=ldap3.LEVEL)

config.ldap_set_groups_query(
    base_dn='CN=Users,DC=example,DC=com',
    filter_tmpl='(&(objectCategory=group)(member=%(userdn)s))',
    scope=ldap3.SUBTREE,
    cache_period=600)

Configurator Methods¶

Configuration of pyramid_ldap3 is done via the Configurator methods named ldap_setup, ldap_set_login_query, and ldap_set_groups_query. All three of these methods should be called once (and, ideally, only once) during the startup phase of your Pyramid application.

Configurator.ldap_setup

This Configurator method accepts arguments used to set up an LDAP connection. After you call it, you will be able to use the pyramid_ldap3.get_ldap_connector() API from within your application. It will return a pyramid_ldap3.Connector instance. See pyramid_ldap3.ldap_setup() for argument details.

Configurator.ldap_set_login_query

This configurator method accepts parameters which tell pyramid_ldap3 how to find a user based on a login. Invoking this method allows the LDAP connector’s authenticate method to work. See pyramid_ldap3.ldap_set_login_query() for argument details.

If ldap_set_login_query is not called, the pyramid_ldap3.Connector.authenticate() method will not work.

Configurator.ldap_set_groups_query

This configurator method accepts parameters which tell pyramid_ldap3 how to find groups based on a user DN. Invoking this method allows the connector’s user_groups method to work. See pyramid_ldap3.ldap_set_groups_query() for argument details.

If ldap_set_groups_query is not called, the pyramid_ldap3.Connector.user_groups() method will not work.

Caching¶

The pyramid_ldap3.ldap_set_groups_query() and pyramid_ldap3.ldap_set_login_query() methods accept a cache_period argument. It must be an integer. If it is nonzero, the results of the associated query will be kept in memory for a maximum of that many seconds, after which they will be flushed.

Usage¶

Assuming LDAP server and query setup has been done (as per above), you can begin using pyramid_ldap3 in your application.

Here’s a small application which uses the pyramid_ldap3 API:

import ldap3

from pyramid.authentication import AuthTktAuthenticationPolicy
from pyramid.authorization import ACLAuthorizationPolicy

from pyramid.view import (
    view_config,
    forbidden_view_config)

from pyramid.response import Response
from pyramid.httpexceptions import HTTPFound

from pyramid.security import (
   Allow,
   Authenticated,
   remember,
   forget)

from pyramid_ldap3 import (
    get_ldap_connector,
    groupfinder)

@view_config(route_name='login',
             renderer='templates/login.pt')
@forbidden_view_config(renderer='templates/login.pt')
def login(request):
    url = request.current_route_url()
    login = ''
    password = ''
    error = ''

    if 'form.submitted' in request.POST:
        login = request.POST['login']
        password = request.POST['password']
        connector = get_ldap_connector(request)
        data = connector.authenticate(login, password)
        if data is not None:
            dn = data[0]
            headers = remember(request, dn)
            return HTTPFound('/', headers=headers)
        else:
            error = 'Invalid credentials'

    return dict(
        login_url=url,
        login=login,
        password=password,
        error=error)

@view_config(route_name='root', permission='view')
def logged_in(request):
    return Response('OK')

@view_config(route_name='logout')
def logout(request):
    headers = forget(request)
    return Response('Logged out', headers=headers)

class RootFactory(object):
    __acl__ = [(Allow, Authenticated, 'view')]
    def __init__(self, request):
        pass

if __name__ == '__main__':
    config = Configurator(root_factory=RootFactory)

    config.include('pyramid_ldap3')

    config.set_authentication_policy(
        AuthTktAuthenticationPolicy(
            'seekr1t', callback=groupfinder))
    config.set_authorization_policy(
        ACLAuthorizationPolicy())

    config.ldap_setup(
        'ldap://ldap.example.com',
        bind='CN=ldap user,CN=Users,DC=example,DC=com',
        passwd='ld@pu5er')

    config.ldap_set_login_query(
        base_dn='CN=Users,DC=example,DC=com',
        filter_tmpl='(sAMAccountName=%(login)s)',
        scope=ldap3.LEVEL)

    config.ldap_set_groups_query(
        base_dn='CN=Users,DC=example,DC=com',
        filter_tmpl='(&(objectCategory=group)(member=%(userdn)s))',
        scope=ldap3.SUBTREE,
        cache_period=600)

    config.add_route('root', '/')
    config.add_route('login', '/login')
    config.add_route('logout', '/logout')
    config.scan('.')

    app = config.make_wsgi_app()
    server = make_server('0.0.0.0', 8080, app)
    server.serve_forever()

This application sets up for an LDAP server on ldap.example.com using pyramid_ldap3.ldap_setup(). It passes a bind DN and passwd for a user capable of doing LDAP queries.

It sets up a login query using pyramid_ldap3.ldap_set_login_query() using a base DN of CN=Users,DC=example,DC=com and a filter_tmpl of (sAMAccountName=%(login)s). The filter template’s %(login)s value will be replaced with the login name provided to the pyramid_ldap3.Connector.authenticate() method. In this case, we’re using Active Directory, and we’d like to use the sAMAccountName as the login parameter (aka the “windows login name”).

The application also sets up a groups query using pyramid_ldap3.ldap_set_groups_query() using a base DN of CN=Users,DC=example,DC=com and a filter_tmpl of (&(objectCategory=group)(member=%(userdn)s)). The group query’s filter template’s %(userdn)s value will be replaced with the DN of the user provided as the userid by the pyramid_ldap3.Connector.user_groups() method, in order to look up all the groups to which the user belongs. In this case, we’re using the member attribute to match against the DN, returning all objects of the objectCategory=group type as group results. Unlike the login query, we cache the result of each search made via this query for up to 10 minutes (600 seconds) based on its cache_period argument.

Note that this query is not recursive; only groups a user belongs to directly will be returned. If e.g. a user belongs to a group that in itself belongs to another group, only the first will be returned. To query user groups recursively, including all parent groups, use the following filter template: (&(objectCategory=group)(member:1.2.840.113556.1.4.1941:=%(userdn)s)). See https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa746475%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

The login view is invoked when someone visits /login or when the user is prevented from invoking another view due to its permission settings. It displays a login form. When the form is submitted, the view obtains the login and password passed from the form as well as an LDAP connector instance using the pyramid_ldap3.get_ldap_connector() function.

The LDAP connector instance has an authenticate() method which accepts the login and password. It will return a data structure containing the user’s DN as well as the user attributes if the user exists and his password is correct. It will return None if the user doesn’t exist or if the user exists and his password is incorrect. A zero length password is always considered invalid since it is, according to the LDAP spec, a request for “unauthenticated authentication.” Unauthenticated authentication should not be used for LDAP based authentication.

See section 5.1.2 of RFC-4513 for a description of this behavior.

When the user’s name and password are correct, the login view uses the pyramid.security.remember API to set headers indicating that the user is logged in. The user’s id will be his LDAP DN.

We make use of a canned groupfinder function to provide group lookup support to the built-in AuthTktAuthenticationPolicy. This groupfinder is called for every request that requires authentication. The groups that an authenticated user belongs to will be the DNs of each of his LDAP groups when you use this groupfinder. The groupfinder uses the pyramid_ldap3.Connector.user_groups() method and looks like this:

def groupfinder(dn, request):
    connector = get_ldap_connector(request)
    group_list = connector.user_groups(dn)
    if group_list is None:
        return None
    return [dn for dn, attrs in group_list]

The effect of this configuration is that a user is unable to view the root view at / until logging in with successful credentials, because it’s protected by the view permission, which is only granted to the Authenticated principal based on the root factory’s ACL.

The logout view calls pyramid.security.forget to obtain headers useful for dropping the credentials.

See the sampleapp sample application inside the pyramid_ldap3 distribution for a working example of the above application. It can be viewed at https://github.com/Cito/pyramid_ldap3/tree/master/sampleapp .

Logging¶

pyramid_ldap3 uses the logger named pyramid_ldap3. It sends output at a DEBUG level useful for its own developers to see what’s happening.

Sample Application¶

pyramid_ldap3 comes with a very simple Pyramid sample application that has just a login form and shows whether the authentication via LDAP succeeded. The configuration file uses an online LDAP test server provided by Forum Systems.

You can install and run the sample application (best done inside a separate virtual environment) using pip like this:

$ pip install -e .[sampleapp]
$ pserve --browser sampleapp.ini

Now you should see the login form in your browser. After entering euler as login and invalid as password, you should see the message Invalid credentials. Try again with password as password, now you should see the message OK and the credentials of the logged in user euler, including the DN of the group mathematicians.

More Information¶

pyramid_ldap3 API
- Configuration
- Usage

Other Versions¶

Visit https://github.com/Cito/pyramid_ldap3 to download development or tagged versions.

Reporting Bugs¶

Visit https://github.com/Cito/pyramid_ldap3/issues to report bugs.