A simple how-to-do-it app that demonstrates one way to perform session-based authentication in Ember using Django as a backend. This application uses the latest builds of:
You should have virtualenvwrapper installed.
git clone git@github.com:dustinfarris/django-ember-authentication.git
mkvirtualenv django-ember-authentication
cd django-ember-authentication
make developmakemake runNavigate to http://localhost:8000 and log in with username dustin and password correct.
Authentication is probably one of the biggest initial hurdles when putting Ember to practical use. At least that has been my experience. Fortunately, with the right architecture, authenticating can be implemented with minimal code, and pain-free.
I chose session-based authentication because it is built into Django and it relieves me of having to hack together token variables and remembering to include them on all my headers etc.. Most of the token-based solutions I've seen to date have not been pretty. Django's session backend does the majority of the work for you, really your only responsibility is the check the username and password (which Django has helpers for as well).
A challenge I encountered every way I tried this was preserving the "current user" after successful authentication. Since the current user is really just a manifestation of the current session, I decided to call the resource "session" which, in my Ember implementation, has user properties. If this sounds confusing it will make sense when you look at the code.
The session is its own resource, with its own route mapping and controller. On the server side, Django responds to three HTTP methods at the /session/ endpoint: GET, POST, and DELETE. GET gets the current session (if there is one), POST checks username/password credentials and then creates a session. DELETE logs the user out. Using regular HTTP methods this way makes it easy to integrate with both Ember and Django REST Framework.
When Ember successfully authenticates, it queries the appropriate user and sets the session model to be that user. The user's properties then become instantly available to the session template, and to anything else with access to the SessionController.
Big thank you to the Ember team and Tom Christie for Django REST Framework. These two projects have had a profound impact on modern web development and are very very exciting to work with.
Also thanks to Toran Billups for creating Ember Data Django REST Adapter without which combining Django and Ember would not be possible—or at least not as straight-forward. Also his screencast on integration testing Ember is an absolute must-watch.