django - CSRF Failed: CSRF token missing or incorrect

Question

I'm using Django 1.7 and django-rest-framework.

I made an API that returns me some JSON data putting this in my settings.py

REST_FRAMEWORK = {
    'DEFAULT_PERMISSION_CLASSES': ('rest_framework.permissions.AllowAny',),
    'DEFAULT_RENDERER_CLASSES': (
    #   'rest_framework.renderers.XMLRenderer',
    'rest_framework.renderers.JSONRenderer',
    #   'rest_framework.renderers.BrowsableAPIRenderer',
    )
}

When I make GET calls, it returns me all the data, but when I try with PUT/PATCH I get:

--------Response Headers---------
Status Code: 403
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 18:51:42 GMT
Vary: Cookie
Server: WSGIServer/0.1 Python/2.7.8
Allow: GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, HEAD, OPTIONS
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
Content-Type: application/json
---------------------------------

--------Response Body-----------
{"detail": "CSRF Failed: CSRF token missing or incorrect."}
---------------------------------

This only happens when I am logged in, if I am anonymous I can PUT/PATCH correctly.

I have tried with @csrf_exempt and I got errors, I have included the rest_framework.permissions.AllowAny in the setting...

I have no idea what's going on. Does anyone know what the issue is?

Answer 1

When you are using SessionAuthentication, you are using Django's authentication which usually requires CSRF to be checked. Django REST Framework enforces this, only for SessionAuthentication, so you must pass the CSRF token in the X-CSRFToken header.

The Django documentation provides more information on retrieving the CSRF token using jQuery and sending it in requests. The CSRF token is saved as a cookie called csrftoken that you can retrieve from a HTTP response, which varies depending on the language that is being used.

If you cannot retrieve the CSRF cookie, this is usually a sign that you should not be using SessionAuthentication. I recommend looking into TokenAuthentication or OAuth 2.0 depending on your needs.