How to Use Django Phone Verify?

Installation

pip install django-phone-verify

Configuration

• Add app to INSTALLED_APPS:

# In settings.py:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    'phone_verify',
]

• Add settings in your settings.py file:

# Settings for phone_verify
PHONE_VERIFICATION = {
    'BACKEND': 'phone_verify.backends.twilio.TwilioBackend',
    'OPTIONS': {
        'SID': 'fake',
        'SECRET': 'fake',
        'FROM': '+14755292729',
        'SANDBOX_TOKEN':'123456',
    },
    'TOKEN_LENGTH': 6,
    'MESSAGE': 'Welcome to {app}! Please use security code {security_code} to proceed.',
    'APP_NAME': 'Phone Verify',
    'SECURITY_CODE_EXPIRATION_TIME': 3600,  # In seconds only
    'VERIFY_SECURITY_CODE_ONLY_ONCE': False,  # If False, then a security code can be used multiple times for verification
}

• Migrate the database:

python manage.py migrate

This would create SMSVerification table, which is used to store phone_number, session_token and security_code.

Usage

NOTE: django-phone-verify provides few APIs which can be added to your list of API endpoints. Its functionality can be extended further based on your use-case as explained below.

Case 1: Verify phone number before/after user registration

This case is suitable if you simply want to access the endpoints to register and verify a phone number (before or after the user registration).

To access the endpoints available in api_endpoints.rst, you just need to update your API’s URLs.

• Add a default router:

# In urls.py

from rest_framework.routers import DefaultRouter
from phone_verify.api import VerificationViewSet

default_router = DefaultRouter(trailing_slash=False)
default_router.register('phone', VerificationViewSet, basename='phone')

urlpatterns = default_router.urls

NOTE: It is recommended that you should verify the phone number of users before their registration.

Case 2: Verify phone number at the time of user registration

This is the case when you choose to integrate your user registration process with phone number verification.

NOTE: Here, you’ll first register a phone number using /api/phone/register and then, will use the endpoint /api/phone/verify_and_register to create a user on successful verification of the phone number.

• Add a default router in urls to redirect on one of your custom viewset:

# In urls.py

from rest_framework.routers import DefaultRouter
from yourapp.api import YourCustomViewSet

default_router = DefaultRouter(trailing_slash=False)

default_router.register('phone', YourCustomViewSet, basename='phone')

urlpatterns = default_router.urls

• Create YourCustomSerializer:

# In serializers.py

from rest_framework import serializers

from phone_verify.serializers import SMSVerificationSerializer

class YourUserSerializer(serializers.Serializer):
    username = serializers.CharField(required=True)
    email = serializers.EmailField(required=True)
    password = serializers.CharField(required=True)
    first_name = serializers.CharField(default="First")
    ...


class YourCustomSerializer(UserSerializer, SMSVerificationSerializer):
    ...

• Add a service to create users:

# In your services.py

from django.contrib.auth import get_user_model

def create_user_account(username, email, password, **extra_args):
    user = get_user_model().objects.create_user(
        username=username, email=email, password=password, **extra_args
    )
    ...
    return user

• Create YourCustomViewSet:

# In your api.py

from rest_framework.decorators import action
from rest_framework.permissions import AllowAny
from rest_framework.response import Response

from phone_verify.api import VerificationViewSet
from phone_verify import serializers as phone_serializers

from . import services, serializers


class YourCustomViewSet(VerificationViewSet):

    @action(detail=False, methods=['POST'], permission_classes=[AllowAny], serializer_class=serializers.YourCustomSerializer)
    def verify_and_register(self, request):
        """Function to verify phone number and register a user

        Most of the code here is corresponding to the "verify" view already present in the package.

        """

        serializer = phone_serializers.SMSVerificationSerializer(data=request.data)
        serializer.is_valid(raise_exception=True)

        # Add your custom code here.
        # An example is shown below:

        serializer = serializers.YourUserSerializer(data=request.data)
        serializer.is_valid(raise_exception=True)
        user = services.create_user_account(**serializer.validated_data)

        return Response(serializer.data)

NOTE:

1. Using the above method, we are coupling the phone verification and user registration process. One can also override the verify view to perform additional actions such as registering the user, registering a company with the verified phone number, etc.

2. After inheriting VerificationViewSet, in case you would like to override get_serializer_class, then after specifying all your conditions, you must return self.serializer_class. For example:

def get_serializer_class(self):
    if self.action == 'verify_and_register':
        return serializers.YourCustomSerializer
    ...
    else:
        return self.serializer_class

Otherwise, serializer classes for verify and register views will not be available.

3. Latest security_code generated for a phone_number can be found at /admin/phone_verify/smsverification/ URL.

4. Django’s post_save signal can be leveraged through its usage in phone_verify.models.SMSVerification function. Additional functionality can be hooked via the post_save signal by creating the following receiver.

# In signals.py
from phone_verify.models import SMSVerification
from django.db.models.signals import post_save
from django.dispatch import receiver
from django.core.mail import send_mail


# `send_phone_verify_email` function will get fired when a new entry is created or the model instance is updated
@receiver(post_save, sender=SMSVerification)
def send_phone_verify_email(sender, instance=None, created=None, **kwargs):
    # Check if the instance is created or not
    if created:
        send_mail(
            subject='Subject here',
            message='Here is the message.',
            from_email='from@example.com',
            recipient_list=['to@example.com'],
            fail_silently=False,
        )