Django REST Framework and CSRF protection for ajax posts.

csrf.js

var jQuery = window.$;

// using jQuery
function getCookie(name) {
    var cookieValue = null;
    if (document.cookie && document.cookie != '') {
        var cookies = document.cookie.split(';');
        for (var i = 0; i < cookies.length; i++) {
            var cookie = jQuery.trim(cookies[i]);
            // Does this cookie string begin with the name we want?
            if (cookie.substring(0, name.length + 1) == (name + '=')) {
                cookieValue = decodeURIComponent(cookie.substring(name.length + 1));
                break;
            }
        }
    }
    return cookieValue;
}

function csrfSafeMethod(method) {
    // these HTTP methods do not require CSRF protection
    return (/^(GET|HEAD|OPTIONS|TRACE)$/.test(method));
}

var csrftoken = getCookie('csrftoken');


$.ajaxSetup({
    beforeSend: function(xhr, settings) {
        if (!csrfSafeMethod(settings.type) && !this.crossDomain) {
            xhr.setRequestHeader("X-CSRFToken", csrftoken);
        }
    }
});


module.exports = csrftoken;

settings.py

REST_FRAMEWORK = {
    'DEFAULT_AUTHENTICATION_CLASSES': (
        'rest_framework.authentication.SessionAuthentication',
    ),
}

After looking at lots of confusing StackOverflow threads, I realized that for authentication to work properly on my single page app that uses Django REST Framework for AJAX calls. In short, I needed to use the SessionAuthentication class, and set the X-CSRFToken header on unsafe api calls. I was confused at first because the CSRFMiddleware had already set the csrf token cookie, which was being sent along with the POSTs, but it was looking for a header, not a cookie.

The csrf.js above is setup for browserify. It just needs to be imported somewhere for it to run.

Thanks, this settings part I've been missing.