This is a very simple way of allowing users to be authenticated via Shibboleth but to be a part of Django groups and users. This is accomplished by using Apache mod_shib to protect the provided view. If the user is able to authenticate then we extract certain details from the data provided by Shibboleth. The view will create Django Users and Groups as necessary.

This code has only been tested with mod_shib for Apache.

Here's the config we use:

<Location /shibboleth-sso/>
  AuthType shibboleth
  ShibCompatWith24 On
  ShibRequestSetting requireSession true
  Require shib-attr member staff
/Location>

You may want to tweak or remove the Require line depending on your needs. As it is, it requires users to be a member of group staff in order to be able to authenticate.

You'll need to add an entry in your urls.py, similar to this:

from shibboleth_session_auth.views import shibboleth_session_auth

urlpatterns += [
    url(r'^shibboleth-sso/', shibboleth_session_auth, name="esnet-sso"),
]

Note that we use shibboleth-sso both here and in the Apache config.

SHIBBOLETH_SESSION_AUTH = {
    'IDP_ATTRIBUTE': 'Shib-Identity-Provider',
    'AUTHORIZED_IDPS': [
        'https://${YOUR_IDP}/idp/shibboleth',
    ],
    #
    # note that we use Apache environment variables directly rather than the
    # HTTP_xxx variables which are derived from the HTTP request headers.
    # The HTTP_xxx variety is vulnerable to potential spoofing
    #
    'USER_ATTRIBUTES': [
        ('uid', 'username', True),
        ('mail', 'email', True),
        ('givenName', 'first_name', False),
        ('sn', 'last_name', False),
    ],
    'GROUP_ATTRIBUTE': 'member',
    'GROUPS_BY_IDP': {},
    'DJANGO_STAFF_GROUP': 'webadmin',
}

IDP_ATTRIBUTE defines which Apache environment variable carries the name of the IdP.

AUTHORIZED_IDPS is a list of IdPs that we trust. The full URL may vary for your setup -- please check this with whomever runs your IdP..

USER_ATTRIBUTES a list of tuples which are used to map from the attribute names provided by the IdP to fields to be used with the Django User model. The format is (idp_attribute, django_model_attribute, required).

GROUP_ATTRIBUTE is the name used by the IdP to provide group membership. The user will be added to each group listed in the group attribute. If the group does not already exist it will be created. Groups are assumed to be separated by a semicolon (;) in the data provided by the IdP.

GROUPS_BY_IDP this is a dictionary mapping an IdP (from AUTHORIZED_IDPS) to a list of groups. If the user is authenticated to the named IdP then the user will be added to each of the groups, creating the groups as necessary.

DJANGO_STAFF_GROUP is the name of the group presented by the IdP that will be used to determine if the user has the is_staff bit set or not.

We assume the the IdP is the source of truth for groups and for whether or not a user should have Django staff privileges. This means that the set of groups the user will be a member of will be exactly the set of groups that the IdP sends. This also means that if the user is no longer a member of DJANGO_STAFF_GROUP that they will lose their staff privileges.