Overview: Authentication and Authorization Using JWTs

In this chapter, we’ll dive deeper into Django and its architecture. We’ll be working with models, serializers, and viewsets to create an API that can receive HTTP requests as well as return a response. This will be done by building an authentication and authorization system using JSON Web TokensJSON Web Token (JWT) is a data structure used for exchanging information securely between parties in web development, and is typically used for authentication and authorization purposes. (JWTs) to allow users to create an account, log in, and log out.

By the end of this chapter, you’ll be able to create Django models, write Django serializers and validation, write viewsets to handle your API requests, expose your viewsets via the Django REST routers, create an authentication and authorization system based on JWTs, and understand what a JWT is and how it helps with authentication and permissions.

Topics covered in this chapter

We will be covering the following topics in this chapter:

• Understanding JWTs

• Organizing a project

• Creating a user model

• Writing the user registration feature

• Adding the login feature

• Adding refresh logic for the access token