Token

A Token is generated with:

Token.objects.create(user)

and it can be used to authenticate requests with Django-Piston as long as it remain active, which is configured in settings.py:

TOKEN_VALID_SECONDS = 3600

The header used to send the token is configured in settings.py with:

TOKEN_AUTH_HEADER = 'X-Auth-Token'

To ask for a token in a resource handler use it like this:

from apikey.auth import TokenAuthentication
from piston.handler import BaseHandler
from piston.resource import Resource
from app.models import Item

class ItemHandler(BaseHandler):
    allowed_methods = ('GET', )
    fields = ('name', 'id')
    model = Item

    def read(self, request):
        return Item.objects.all()

handler = Resource(
    handler=ItemHandler, authentication=TokenAuthentication())

The token remains active TOKEN_VALID_SECONDS after each request, and it should be created in a request authenticated with the username/email and password/key, or Basic, Digest.

ApiKey

ApiKey is basically a key used to authenticate the requests that replace an email/username and password in all the API request.

You can change the authorization header by setting the APIKEY_AUTHORIZATION_HEADER in settings.py:

APIKEY_AUTHORIZATION_HEADER = 'App-Authorization'

To add api authentication with piston write this in your handlers:

from apikey.auth import ApiKeyAuthentication
from piston.handler import BaseHandler
from piston.resource import Resource
from app.models import Item

class ItemHandler(BaseHandler):
    allowed_methods = ('GET', )
    fields = ('name', 'id')
    model = Item

    def read(self, request):
        return Item.objects.all()

handler = Resource(
    handler=ItemHandler, authentication=ApiKeyAuthentication())