# Introduction

## Rationale

Most existing Django apps that address the problem of social authentication unfortunately focus only on one dimension - the social. Most developers end up integrating another app in order to support authentication flows that are locally generated.

This approach creates a development gap between local and social authentication flows. It has remained an issue in spite of numerous common scenarios that both require. For example, an email address passed along by an OpenID provider may not be verified. Therefore, prior to hooking up an OpenID account to a local account the email address must be verified. This essentially is one of many use cases that mandate email verification to be present in both worlds.

Integrating both is a humongous and tedious process. It is not as simple as adding one social authentication app, and one local account registration app to your `INSTALLED_APPS` list.

This inadequacy is the reason for this project’s existence – to offer a fully integrated authentication app that allows for both local and social authentication, with flows that just work, beautifully!

## Features

🔑 Comprehensive account functionality

  Supports multiple authentication schemes (e.g. login by user name, or by email), as well as multiple strategies for account verification (ranging from none to mandatory email verification).

👥 Social Login

  Login using external identity providers, supporting any Open ID Connect compatible provider, many OAuth 1.0/2.0 providers, as well as custom protocols such as, for example, Telegram authentication.

💼 Enterprise ready

  Supports SAML 2.0, which is often used in a B2B context.

🕵️ Battle-tested

  The package has been out in the open since 2010. It is in use by many commercial companies whose business depends on it and has hence been subjected to various penetration testing attempts.

⏳Rate limiting

  When you expose an authentication-enabled web service to the internet, it is important to be prepared for potential brute force attempts. Therefore, rate limiting is enabled out of the box.

🔒 Private

  Many sites leak information. For example, on many sites you can check whether someone you know has an account by input their email address into the password forgotten form, or trying to signup with it. We offer account enumeration prevention, making it impossible to tell whether or not somebody already has an account.

🧩 Customizable

  As a developer, you have the flexibility to customize the core functionality according to your specific requirements. By employing the adapter pattern, you can effortlessly introduce interventions at the desired points to deviate from the standard behavior. This level of customization empowers you to tailor the software to meet your unique needs and preferences.

⚙️ Configuration

  The required consumer keys and secrets for interacting with Facebook, X (Twitter) and the likes can be configured using regular settings, or, can be configured in the database via the Django admin. Here, optional support for the Django sites framework is available, which is helpful for larger multi-domain projects, but also allows for easy switching between a development (localhost) and production setup without messing with your settings and database.

## Design

This package is internally subdivided into individual Django apps that each target a specific functional part:

- Functionality related to regular (username and/or email based) accounts is implemented in the `allauth.account` app.

- Functionality related to social accounts is implemented in the `allauth.socialaccount` app.

- Functionality related to multi-factor authentication is implemented in the `allauth.mfa` app.

The documentation is structured according to the subdivision above, where each functional part is covered by its own chapter.