django User authentication via LDAP

Question

I'm trying to check the user login in my django project against our AD via ldap. I found a lot of tutorials online that I've tried so far.

For some reason the authenticate(username, password)-function returns None.

Here is my Code so far:

views.py (login)

def login_view(request):
    if not request.user.is_authenticated:
        if request.method == 'POST':
            login_form = Login_form(request.POST)
            if login_form.is_valid():
                username = login_form.data.get('username')
                password = login_form.data.get('password')
                domain_name = "@my.domain.com"
                if domain_name not in username:
                    username += domain_name
                try:
                    user = authenticate(username=username, password=password)
                    print(user) # this gives me None
                    if user is not None:
                        if user.is_active:
                            login(request=request, user=user)
                            return redirect('index')
                    else:
                        form = AuthenticationForm()
                        messages.error(request, 'Try again!')
                        return render(request, 'myapp/login.html', {'form': form})
                except ldap.LDAPError as e:
                    print(e) # no error is displayed here
                    form = AuthenticationForm()
                    messages.error(request, 'Try again!')
                    return render(request, 'myapp/login.html', {'form': form})
          ### Some more funcs to  
          ### redirect to login.html
          ### if the login fails

settings.py:

AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS = (
    'django_auth_ldap.backend.LDAPBackend',
)

AUTH_LDAP_SERVER_URI = "ldap://my.domain.com:389"
AUTH_LDAP_BIND_DN = "CN=Users,DC=my,DC=domain,DC=com"
AUTH_LDAP_BIND_PASSWORD = ""    # I tried with blank password for anonymous bind or
                                # with "%(password)s" as template but I don't know if that's possible
                                # and also without the AUTH_LDAP_BIND_PASSWORD setting
AUTH_LDAP_CONNECTION_OPTIONS = {ldap.OPT_REFERRALS: 0}
AUTH_LDAP_USER_ATTR_MAP = {'group': "memberof", "first_name": "givenName", "last_name": "sn"}
AUTH_LDAP_USER_SEARCH = LDAPSearch("DC=my,DC=domain,DC=com,CN=Users",
                                   ldap.SCOPE_SUBTREE, "(sAMAccountName=%(user)s)") 
# since we need to login via username i need to search for username@my.domain.com 
# so I try to search for sAMAccountName

A while ago i wrote a LDAP-login-script in PHP with works like a charm and all the DN, bindings and search are the same.

So my question is:

Where is it going wrong or what did I miss?

Answer 1

I would highly recommend using django-python3-ldap. We have used this package in production for years after trying the others, it works, and is written entirely in Python 3: https://github.com/etianen/django-python3-ldap

We use it on port 636 and ldaps and it works as well.

It keeps us from having to write our own custom backend or login method; all we had to do were change some settings and write the format_username function. The README has good information about hooking into Active Directory: I'd start with that configuration, and see how it works. Good luck!