Django Rest Framework remove csrf

I know that there are answers regarding Django Rest Framework, but I couldn't find a solution to my problem.

I have an application which has authentication and some functionality. I added a new app to it, which uses Django Rest Framework. I want to use the library only in this app. Also I want to make POST request, and I always receive this response:

{
    "detail": "CSRF Failed: CSRF token missing or incorrect."
}

I have the following code:

# urls.py
from django.conf.urls import patterns, url


urlpatterns = patterns(
    'api.views',
    url(r'^object/$', views.Object.as_view()),
)

# views.py
from rest_framework.views import APIView
from rest_framework.response import Response
from django.views.decorators.csrf import csrf_exempt


class Object(APIView):

    @csrf_exempt
    def post(self, request, format=None):
        return Response({'received data': request.data})

I want add the API without affecting the current application. So my questions is how can I disable CSRF only for this app ?

Note: Disabling CSRF is unsafe from security point of view. Please use your judgement to use the below method.

Why this error is happening?

This is happening because of the default SessionAuthentication scheme used by DRF. DRF's SessionAuthentication uses Django's session framework for authentication which requires CSRF to be checked.

When you don't define any authentication_classes in your view/viewset, DRF uses this authentication classes as the default.

'DEFAULT_AUTHENTICATION_CLASSES'= (
    'rest_framework.authentication.SessionAuthentication',
    'rest_framework.authentication.BasicAuthentication'
),

Since DRF needs to support both session and non-session based authentication to the same views, it enforces CSRF check for only authenticated users. This means that only authenticated requests require CSRF tokens and anonymous requests may be sent without CSRF tokens.

If you're using an AJAX style API with SessionAuthentication, you'll need to include a valid CSRF token for any "unsafe" HTTP method calls, such as PUT, PATCH, POST or DELETE requests.

What to do then?

Now to disable csrf check, you can create a custom authentication class CsrfExemptSessionAuthentication which extends from the default SessionAuthentication class. In this authentication class, we will override the enforce_csrf() check which was happening inside the actual SessionAuthentication.

from rest_framework.authentication import SessionAuthentication, BasicAuthentication 

class CsrfExemptSessionAuthentication(SessionAuthentication):

    def enforce_csrf(self, request):
        return  # To not perform the csrf check previously happening

In your view, then you can define the authentication_classes to be:

authentication_classes = (CsrfExemptSessionAuthentication, BasicAuthentication)

This should handle the csrf error.

Easier solution:

In views.py, use django-braces' CsrfExemptMixin and authentication_classes:

# views.py
from rest_framework.views import APIView
from rest_framework.response import Response
from django.views.decorators.csrf import csrf_exempt
from braces.views import CsrfExemptMixin


class Object(CsrfExemptMixin, APIView):
    authentication_classes = []

    def post(self, request, format=None):
        return Response({'received data': request.data})

Modify urls.py

If you manage your routes in urls.py, you can wrap your desired routes with csrf_exempt() to exclude them from the CSRF verification middleware.

import views

from django.conf.urls import patterns, url
from django.views.decorators.csrf import csrf_exempt


urlpatterns = patterns('',
    url(r'^object/$', csrf_exempt(views.ObjectView.as_view())),
    ...
)

Alternatively, as a Decorator Some may find the use of the @csrf_exempt decorator more suitable for their needs

for instance,

from django.views.decorators.csrf import csrf_exempt
from django.http import HttpResponse

@csrf_exempt
def my_view(request):
    return HttpResponse('Hello world')

should get the Job Done!

For all who did not find a helpful answer. Yes DRF automatically removes CSRF protection if you do not use SessionAuthentication AUTHENTICATION CLASS, for example, many developers use only JWT:

'DEFAULT_AUTHENTICATION_CLASSES': (
        'rest_framework_jwt.authentication.JSONWebTokenAuthentication',
    ),

But issue CSRF not set may be occurred from some another reason, for exmple you not correctly added path to you view:

url(r'^api/signup/', CreateUserView),  # <= error! DRF cant remove CSRF because it is not as_view that does it!

instead of

url(r'^api/signup/', CreateUserView.as_view()),

I tried a few of the answers above and felt creating a separate class was a little overboard.

For reference, I ran into this problem when trying to update a function based view method to a class based view method for user registration.

When using class-based-views (CBVs) and Django Rest Framework (DRF), Inherit from the ApiView class and set permission_classes and authentication_classes to an empty tuple. Find an example below.

class UserRegistrationView(APIView):

    permission_classes = ()
    authentication_classes = ()

    def post(self, request, *args, **kwargs):

        # rest of your code here

If you do not want to use session based authentication, you can remove Session Authentication from REST_AUTHENTICATION_CLASSES and that would automatically remove all csrf based issues. But in that case Browseable apis might not work.

Besides this error should not come even with session authentication. You should use custom authentication like TokenAuthentication for your apis and make sure to send Accept:application/json and Content-Type:application/json(provided you are using json) in your requests along with authentication token.

You need to add this to prevent default session authentication: (settings.py)

REST_FRAMEWORK = {
    'DEFAULT_AUTHENTICATION_CLASSES': (
        'rest_framework.authentication.TokenAuthentication',
    ),
    'DEFAULT_PERMISSION_CLASSES': (
        'rest_framework.permissions.IsAuthenticated', 
    )
}

Then: (views.py)

from rest_framework.permissions import AllowAny

class Abc(APIView):
    permission_classes = (AllowAny,)

    def ...():

You need to be absolutely sure, that you want to switch off CSRF protection.

1. Create file authentication.py and place it wherever you want in your project. For example, in folder session_utils.
2. Place this code in the file:

from rest_framework.authentication import SessionAuthentication


class SessionCsrfExemptAuthentication(SessionAuthentication):
    def enforce_csrf(self, request):
        pass

3. When you want to make POST, PUT, PATCH or DELETE requests to your view be sure that you've changed SessionAuthentication to SessionCsrfExemptAuthentication from the new file. View example:

    @api_view(["POST"])
    @authentication_classes([SessionCsrfExemptAuthentication])
    @permission_classes([IsAuthenticated])
    def some_view(request) -> "Response":
        # some logic here
        return Response({})

This trick allow you to override method (pass) enforce_csrf and the new session authentication class will skip CSRF check.

✌️

I am struck with the same problem. I followed this reference and it worked. Solution is to create a middleware

Add disable.py file in one of your apps (in my case it is 'myapp')

class DisableCSRF(object):
    def process_request(self, request):
        setattr(request, '_dont_enforce_csrf_checks', True)

And add the middileware to the MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES

MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = (
myapp.disable.DisableCSRF,
)

My Solution is shown blow. Just decorate my class.

from django.views.decorators.csrf import csrf_exempt
@method_decorator(csrf_exempt, name='dispatch')
@method_decorator(basic_auth_required(
    target_test=lambda request: not request.user.is_authenticated
), name='dispatch')
class GenPedigreeView(View):
    pass

If you are using an exclusive virtual environment for your application, you can use the following approach without effective any other applications.

What you observed happens because rest_framework/authentication.py has this code in the authenticate method of SessionAuthentication class:

self.enforce_csrf(request)

You can modify the Request class to have a property called csrf_exempt and initialize it inside your respective View class to True if you do not want CSRF checks. For example:

Next, modify the above code as follows:

if not request.csrf_exempt:
    self.enforce_csrf(request)

There are some related changes you'd have to do it in the Request class

When using REST API POSTs, absence of X-CSRFToken request header may cause that error. Django docs provide a sample code on getting and setting the CSRF token value from JS.

As pointed in answers above, CSRF check happens when the SessionAuthentication is used. Another approach is to use TokenAuthentication, but keep in mind that it should be placed first in the list of DEFAULT_AUTHENTICATION_CLASSES of REST_FRAMEWORK setting.

This could also be a problem during a DNS Rebinding attack.

In between DNS changes, this can also be a factor. Waiting till DNS is fully flushed will resolve this if it was working before DNS problems/changes.

For me, using django 3.1.5 and django rest framework 3.12 the solution was way easier.

It happened to me that on a views.py file I had defined this two methods:

@api_view(['POST'])
@permission_classes((IsAuthenticated, ))
def create_transaction(request):
    return Response(status=status.HTTP_200_OK)

def create_transaction(initial_data):
    pass

On my urls.py:

urlpatterns = [
    path('transaction', views.create_transaction, name='transaction'),
]

Django was picking the latest and throwing the error. Renaming one of the two solved the issue.

Code bellow would remove demand for CSRF. Even anon user would be able to send request.

from typing import List, Any

class Object(APIView):
    authentication_classes: List = []
    permission_classes: List[Any] = [AllowAny]

    ...
    ...

Removing CSRF check is not always the only (or best) solution. Actually, it's an important security mechanism for SessionAuthentication.

I was having the same issue when trying to authenticate with JWT and doing a POST request.

My initial setup looked like this:

REST_FRAMEWORK = {
    "DEFAULT_AUTHENTICATION_CLASSES": (
        "rest_framework.authentication.SessionAuthentication",
        "django_cognito_jwt.JSONWebTokenAuthentication",
    ),
    ...
}

As SessionAuthentication was checked first in the list, the CSRF error was raised. My solution was as simple as changing the order to always check JWT auth first. Like this:

    "DEFAULT_AUTHENTICATION_CLASSES": (
        "django_cognito_jwt.JSONWebTokenAuthentication",
        "rest_framework.authentication.SessionAuthentication",
    ),

At the end, SessionAuthentication for me is only used in the django admin panel and 99% of the requests goes to the API that uses JWT auth.