# Setup Social Authentication In Django Rest Framework

With the Global surge in internet users, as well as people embracing and gaining access to digital products, It's become the goal of many applications to bring the best user experience and retain many guest users. Social Authentication aims at simplifying the login process for visitors, thus leading to a higher conversion rate on user registrations.

Some advantages include:

* Faster registration
    
* One login credentials less to remember
    
* less failed login attempts.
    
* Easier mobile experience.
    
* The user experience can be more personalized and directed.
    

And the list goes on.

### Backstory

I recently needed to implement social login API's for Google and Facebook social providers. I had a lot of attempts to get it working and talking with the client application, but it proved challenging 😧 .

Alas we got the Social Auth API's communicating with the client application 😊 and in this tutorial I will show you how to easily implement Facebook social login.

**Assumptions.** The reader has some experience with Python, Django Rest Framework and API's.

Integrating social Authentication to the server-side of an application requires:

* A selected social authentication provider
    
* A log-in request to the social authentication provider
    
* An authentication token from login, so as to access protected API routes.
    

Before getting started,

* Head to [Facebook developers](https://developers.facebook.com/apps/) page
    
* Create a social App
    
* On the dashboard, settings >> basic, add ‘app domain’ and ‘site url’ which can be any url and remember to set the URL in the `/etc/hosts` file in your local machine.
    
* Copy the FACEBOOK\_APP\_ID and the FACEBOOK\_APP\_SECRET and set them as environment variables in your project’s .env file.
    

All set, let's configure our Django application;

In this project we'll be working with the [django-rest-auth](https://django-rest-auth.readthedocs.io/en/latest/introduction.html) library. The package aims to simplify registration and authentication tasks, by providing a set of REST API endpoints .

1.) Install django-rest-auth package:

```yaml
pip install django-rest-auth
```

2.) Add rest\_auth app to INSTALLED\_APPS in your django settings.py:

```yaml
INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...,
    'rest_framework',
    'rest_framework.authtoken',
    ...,
    'rest_auth'
)
```

3.) Add rest\_auth urls:

```yaml
urlpatterns = [
    ...,
    path('api/<version>/rest-auth/', include('rest_auth.urls'))
]
```

4.) We need to install the [django-allauth](https://django-allauth.readthedocs.io/en/latest/installation.html) package as well, because we need to enable a standard registration process.

```yaml
pip install django-allauth
```

5.) Add django.contrib.sites, allauth, allauth.account and rest\_auth.registration apps to INSTALLED\_APPS in your django settings.py:

```yaml
INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...,
    'django.contrib.sites',
    'allauth',
    'allauth.account',
    'rest_auth.registration',
)
```

6.) Add SITE\_ID = 1 to your django settings.py

```yaml
SITE_ID = 1
```

7.) Add rest\_auth.registration urls:

```yaml
urlpatterns = [
    ...,
    path('api/<version>/rest-auth/', include('rest_auth.urls')),
    path('api/<version>/rest-auth/registration/', include('rest_auth.registration.urls'))
]
```

8.) Add allauth.socialaccount and allauth.socialaccount.providers.facebook or allauth.socialaccount.providers.twitter apps to INSTALLED\_APPS in your django settings.py:

```yaml
INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...,
    'rest_framework',
    'rest_framework.authtoken',
    'rest_auth'
    ...,
    'django.contrib.sites',
    'allauth',
    'allauth.account',
    'rest_auth.registration',
    ...,
    'allauth.socialaccount',
    'allauth.socialaccount.providers.facebook'

)
```

9.) Add Social Application in Django admin panel

![Screenshot from 2020-09-13 20-30-02.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1600025625421/fm3FPggTR.png align="left")

10.) Create a new view as a subclass of rest\_auth.registration.views.SocialLoginView:

```yaml
from allauth.socialaccount.providers.facebook.views import FacebookOAuth2Adapter
from rest_auth.registration.views import SocialLoginView

class FacebookLogin(SocialLoginView):
    adapter_class = FacebookOAuth2Adapter
```

11.) Create URL for FacebookLogin view:

```yaml
urlpatterns += [
    
    path('api/<version>/rest-auth/facebook/', FacebookLogin.as_view(), name='fb_login'),
]
```

Let's test the API without any Authentication token and get the appropriate response:

![Screenshot from 2020-09-13 20-24-25.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1600025650883/d1jBBHpGQ.png align="left")

TaDa!!! The backend social Auth configuration is ready for communication with the client application.

Hopefully, you can improve the user experience of your applications by supporting more social Authentication providers 🤓.

Thanks for the audience 🤗. Connect with me on [Github](https://www.github.com/nextwebb), [linkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/m/in/peterson-oaikhenah-102645144) && [Twitter](https://www.twitter.com/i_am_nextwebb).

### More Resources:

* [Django-Rest-Auth documentation](https://django-rest-auth.readthedocs.io/en/latest/installation.html)
    
* [Django-Allauth documentation](https://django-allauth.readthedocs.io/en/latest/installation.html)