About JSON Web Tokens

• JSON Web Token (JWT) is an open standard (RFC 7519) that defines a compact and self-contained way for securely transmitting information between parties as a JSON object. This information can be verified and trusted because it is digitally signed. JWTs can be signed using a secret (with the HMAC algorithm) or a public/private key pair using RSA or ECDSA.

When should you use JSON Web Tokens?

• Authorization: This is the most common scenario for using JWT. Once the user is logged in, each subsequent request will include the JWT, allowing the user to access routes, services, and resources that are permitted with that token. Single Sign On is a feature that widely uses JWT nowadays, because of its small overhead and its ability to be easily used across different domains.

• Information Exchange: JSON Web Tokens are a good way of securely transmitting information between parties. Because JWTs can be signed—for example, using public/private key pairs you can be sure the senders are who they say they are.

What is the JSON Web Token structure?

• JSON Web Tokens consist of three parts separated by dots (.), which are:

• Header: The header typically consists of two parts: the type of the token, which is JWT, and the signing algorithm being used, such as HMAC SHA256 or RSA.
• Payload: The second part of the token is the payload, which contains the claims. Claims are statements about an entity (typically, the user) and additional data
• Public claims: These can be defined at will by those using JWTs. But to avoid collisions they should be defined in the IANA JSON Web Token Registry or be defined as a URI that contains a collision resistant namespace.
• Private claims: These are the custom claims created to share information between parties that agree on using them and are neither registered or public claims.

Putting all together

The output is three Base64-URL strings separated by dots that can be easily passed in HTML and HTTP environments, while being more compact when compared to XML-based standards such as SAML.

How do JSON Web Tokens work?

In authentication, when the user successfully logs in using their credentials, a JSON Web Token will be returned. Since tokens are credentials, great care must be taken to prevent security issues. In general, you should not keep tokens longer than required.

Why should we use JSON Web Tokens?

As JSON is less verbose than XML, when it is encoded its size is also smaller, making JWT more compact than SAML. This makes JWT a good choice to be passed in HTML and HTTP environments.

DRF JWT Authentication

How to Use JWT Authentication with Django REST Framework JWT stand for JSON Web Token and it is an authentication strategy used by client/server applications where the client is a Web application using JavaScript and some frontend framework like Angular, React or VueJS.