Django token auth backend

backends.py

from apps.users.models import User, Token


class TokenBackend(object):
    """Token authentication for API"""

    def authenticate(self, token=None):
        try:
            token = Token.objects.get(key=token)
            return token.user
        except Token.DoesNotExist:
            return None

    def get_user(self, user_id):
        try:
            return User.objects.get(pk=user_id)
        except User.DoesNotExist:
            return None

decorators.py

from django.http import JsonResponse


def token_required(func):
    """login_requred analog for API"""

    def wrap(request, *args, **kwargs):
        error401 = JsonResponse({'error': 'Authentication error'}, status=401)
        if 'HTTP_AUTHORIZATION' in request.META:
            if request.user is None or not request.user.is_active:
                return error401
            else:
                return func(request, *args, **kwargs)
        else:
            return error401

    return wrap

Django token auth backend

Naming file

middleware.py

from django.contrib.auth import authenticate


def get_token(request):
    """Get token from HTTP header"""
    
    if 'HTTP_AUTHORIZATION' in request.META:
        full_auth = request.META['HTTP_AUTHORIZATION'].split(' ')
        if len(full_auth) < 2 or full_auth[0] != 'Token':
            return None

        auth = full_auth[1].split('=')
        if len(auth) < 2 or auth[0] != 'token':
            return None
        token = auth[1].strip('"')
        return token
    return None


class AuthAPI(object):
    """
    Add user to request var for API calls
    Header format (RFC2617):
    Authorization: Token token="abcd1234"
    """

    def __init__(self, get_response):
        self.get_response = get_response

    def __call__(self, request):
        if request.get_full_path()[:4] != '/api':
            return self.get_response(request)

        token = get_token(request)
        if token:
            user = authenticate(token=token)
            if user and user.is_active:
                user.backend = 'core.backends.TokenBackend'
                request.user = user

        return self.get_response(request)

settings.py

MIDDLEWARE += ['core.middleware.AuthAPI']
AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS = [
    'django.contrib.auth.backends.ModelBackend',
    'core.backends.TokenBackend',
]

@devops724-2 most probably I forgot to add it. You can find full example in this small project.
It was quite a long time ago, so I won't add it to this example, since I don't remember which fields are important, and which are not.