Vision

django-ticketoffice helps developers to implement features using the “one-shot authentication” (or “temporary credentials”) pattern.

As an example Django uses temporary credentials for its “password reset” feature:

  • a token is randomly generated
  • the user receives it by mail
  • the user shows the token to set a new password
  • once the action (password reset) has been done, the authorization token is deactivated
  • the invitation has a limited lifetime.

Developers often face similar situations, where they need to grant users some permissions for a limited scope and limited time.

As an example, there are many websites sending a code to user’s phone number. Then the user has to confirm some secured operation with that code.

django-ticketoffice provides tools for developers to implement such features. It provides tickets and authentication features.

django-ticketoffice is meant to be flexible, so that it can fit many situations. It does focus on authentication.

At core, django-ticketoffice is not an all-in-one solution implementing the full workflow. As an example it does not include email sending, at the moment. That said, it may provide some generic views that do so, as helpers, if some patterns emerge.

django-ticketoffice primary purpose is to provide a smart API to Django developers. It means that high-level API (Django-side) should be stable ; whereas internal implementation of the “temporary credentials” pattern may change, or be configurable. As an example, tickets could be managed in Django‘s main database, or in some external service (REST API? Kerberos?).

Since django-ticketoffice is built on top of Django, it may provide a web API to manage tickets. It means it could itself be used as “external one-shot authentication service”, i.e. it could be used either temporary credentials client or server. That said, priority is the client feature, the server feature would be a bonus.