experimental_features.rst

Experimental features

JWTTokenUserAuthentication backend

The JWTTokenUserAuthentication backend's authenticate method does not perform a database lookup to obtain a user instance. Instead, it returns a rest_framework_simplejwt.models.TokenUser instance which acts as a stateless user object backed only by a validated token instead of a record in a database. This can facilitate developing single sign-on functionality between separately hosted Django apps which all share the same token secret key. To use this feature, add the rest_framework_simplejwt.authentication.JWTTokenUserAuthentication backend (instead of the default JWTAuthentication backend) to the Django REST Framework's DEFAULT_AUTHENTICATION_CLASSES config setting:

REST_FRAMEWORK = {
    ...
    'DEFAULT_AUTHENTICATION_CLASSES': (
        ...
        'rest_framework_simplejwt.authentication.JWTTokenUserAuthentication',
    )
    ...
}