django-visitors 0.1.1
Django support for 'visitors' - who are neither anonymous nor authenticated.
License: MIT
Requires Python: >=3.7,<4.0

# Django Visitors

Django app for managing temporary session-based users.

### Background

This package has been extracted out of `django-request-token` as a specific use
case - that of temporary site "visitors". It enables a type of ephemeral user
who is neither anonymous nor authenticated, but somewhere in between - known for
the duration of their session.

### Motivation

We've been using `django-request-token` for a while, and have issued over
100,000 tokens. A recent analysis showed two main use cases - single-use "magic
links" for logging people in, and a more involved case where we invite
unregistered users on to the platform to perform some action - providing a
reference perhaps, or collaborating on something with (registered) users. The
former we have extracted out into `django-magic-links` - and this package
addresses the latter.

### What is a "visitor"?

In the standard Django model you have the concept of an `AnonymousUser`, and an
authenticated `User` - someone who has logged in. We have a third, intermediate,
type of user - which we have historically referred to as a "Temp User", which is
someone we know _of_, but who has not yet registered.

The canonical example of this is leaving a reference: user A on the site invites
user B to leave a reference for them. They (A) give us B's name and email, we
invite them to click on a link and fill out a form. That's it. We store their
name and email so that we can contact them, but it's ephemeral - we don't need
it, and we don't use it. Storing this data in the User table made sense (as it
has name and email fields), but it led to a lot of `user_type=TEMP` munging to
determine who is a 'real' user on the site.

What we really want is to 'stash' this information somewhere outside of the auth
system, and to enable these temp users to have restricted access to specific
areas of the application, for a limited period, after which we can forget about
them and clear out the data.

We call these users "visitors".

### Use Case - request a reference

Fred is a registered user on the site, and would like a reference from Ginger,
his dance partner.

1. Fred fills out the reference request form:

```
   Name: Ginger
   Email: ginger@[...].com
   Message: ...
   Scope: REFERENCE_REQUEST [hidden field]
```

2. We save this information, and generate a unique link which we send to Ginger,
   along with the message.

3. Ginger clicks on the link, at which point we recognise that this is someone
   we know about - a "visitor" - but who is in all other respects an
   `AnonymousUser`.

4. We stash the visitor info in the standard session object - so that even
   though Ginger is not authenticated, we know who she is, and more importantly
   we know why she's here (REFERENCE_REQUEST).

5. Ginger submits the reference - which may be a multi-step process, involving
   GETs and POSTs, all of which are guarded by a decorator that restricts access
   to visitors with the appropriate Scope (just like `django-request-token`).

6. At the final step we can (optionally) choose to clear the session info
   immediately, effectively removing all further access.

### Implementation

This code has been extracted out of `django-request-token` and simplified. It
stores the visitor data in the `Visitor` model, and on each successful first
request (where the token is 'processed' and the session filled) we record a
`VisitorLog` record. This includes HTTP request info (session_key, referer,
client IP, user-agent). This information is for analytics only - for instance
determining whether links are being shared.

### Configuration

#### Django Settings

1. Add `visitors` to `INSTALLED_APPS`
1. Add `visitors.middleware.VisitorRequestMiddleware` to `MIDDLEWARE`
1. Add `visitors.middleware.VisitorSessionMiddleware` to `MIDDLEWARE`

#### Environment Settings

* `VISITOR_SESSION_KEY`: session key used to stash visitor info
  ("visitor:session")

* `VISITOR_QUERYSTRING_KEY`: querystring param used on tokenised links ("vid")

### Usage

Once you have the package configured, you should use the `allow_visitor`
decorator to protect views that you want to restricted to visitors only. The
decorator requires a `scope` kwarg, which must match the `Visitor.scope` value
set when the `Visitor` object is created.

```python
@allow_visitor(scope="foo")
def protected_view(request):
   pass
```

By default the decorator will allow visitors with the correct scope, deny
anonymous users, and also allow authenticated users. If you want more control
over the access, you can pass a callable as the `bypass` param:

```python
# prevent authenticated users from bypassing the check
@allow_visitor(scope="foo", bypass=lambda u: False)
def deny_authenticated_users(request):
   pass
```

If you don't care about the scope (you should), you can use `"*"` to allow all
visitors access:

```python
@allow_visitor(scope="*")
def allow_all_scopes(request):
   pass
```