pypwdless - Passwordless Authentication In Python

Introduction

This python library can be used to generate one time JWT codes which can be sent to a user's email address for authentication purposes. The code can later be verified and extended for a native app session (similar to a magic link: https://auth0.com/docs/connections/passwordless/spa-email-link).

Available Functions

The python library exposes three functions which can be directly used:

generateCode(email)

Used to generate a one-time code that can be sent to a user's email. This function returns a JSON web token (https://jwt.io/) in base64 encoded format.

sendEmail(code)

Used to email the code to a user's email address.

validateCode(returnToken,returnEmail="")

Used to validate a code. It takes two arguments where returnEmail is an optional argument.

Usage - With pip

This python library has been published to https://pypi.org and hence can be installed using pip.

pip install pypwdless

NOTE: For sendEmail(code) function to work, it needs valid credentials for an SMTP server. This can be configured in config.py file installed under site-packages. Example: If virtualenv (venv) is used, the file can be found under {{homepath}}/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pypwdless.

Usage - From Source Code

1. Create a python virtualenv. virtualenv venv
2. Do source venv/bin/activate
3. Clone this repo.
4. Install dependencies (PyJwt) mentioned in requirements.txt. Use pip install -r pypwdless/requirements.txt
5. Start using the functions provided by the code.

NOTE: For sendEmail(code) function to work, it needs valid credentials for an SMTP server. This can be configured in config.py file.

Working

1. Generate a code using generateCode for an email address. This function will return a code.
2. This code can be emailed to a user's email address using sendEmail. NOTE: This function requires changes to config.py file which has been discussed previously. This function will return True if successful. If not, it will return False with an error statement.
3. Now, the same code can be validated using validateCode which returns True when validation is successful. If not, it will return False and the error statement (expired, invalid token, code not associated with an email address)

Test Code

from pypwdless import pwdless

if __name__ == "__main__":
	code = pwdless.generateCode("<email address>") # Should return the code (base64 encode format)
	print pwdless.sendEmail(code) # Should return True
	print pwdless.validateCode(code) # Should return True

Benefits

• One-time code
• Configurable TTL and code length
• Stateless. Using JWT
• Configurable SMTP server. For emails

Questions

Reach out to [email protected] or raise an issue/request here.