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Strong, Simple, and Precise security for Flask APIs

Overview

API security should be strong, simple, and precise like a Roman Legionary. This package aims to provide that. Using JWT tokens as implemented by PyJWT, flask_praetorian uses a very simple interface to make sure that the users accessing your API’s endpoints are provisioned with the correct roles for access.

This project was heavily influenced by Flask-Security, but intends to supply only essential functionality. Instead of trying to anticipate the needs of all users, flask-praetorian will provide a simple and secure mechanism to provide security for APIs specifically.

This extesion offers a batteries-included approach to security for your API. For essential security concerns for Flask-based APIs, flask-praetorian should supply everything you need.

The flask-praetorian package can be used to:

  • Hash passwords for storing in your database
  • Verify plaintext passwords against the hashed, stored versions
  • Generate authorization tokens upon verification of passwords
  • Check requests to secured endpoints for authorized tokens
  • Supply expiration of tokens and mechanisms for refreshing them
  • Ensure that the users associated with tokens have necessary roles for access
  • Parse user information from request headers or cookies for use in client route handlers
  • Support inclusion of custom user claims in tokens
  • Register new users using email verification

All of this is provided in a very simple to confiure and initialize flask extension. Though simple, the security provided by flask-praetorian is strong due to the usage of the proven security technology of JWT and python’s PassLib package.