User authentication

Create users, manage users, and require sign in to authenticate and use Mage.

---

Require user authentication

If you’re using Mage version 0.8.4 or greater, than you can optionally turn on user authentication.

Set the following environment variable name and value:

Name	REQUIRE_USER_AUTHENTICATION
Value	1

Set access token expiration time

You can set the MAGE_ACCESS_TOKEN_EXPIRY_TIME environment variable to customize the expiration time of a Mage access token. The value should be the length of time in seconds.

Defaults to 2592000 which is 30 days.

Name	MAGE_ACCESS_TOKEN_EXPIRY_TIME
Value	2592000

Running Mage in Docker

If you’re running Mage using Docker, you can run Mage and set the environment variable in the docker run command. Follow these instructions to learn how.

Set the environment variable using -e REQUIRE_USER_AUTHENTICATION=1.

For example:

docker run -it -p 6789:6789 \
  -v $(pwd):/home/src \
  -e REQUIRE_USER_AUTHENTICATION=1 \
  mageai/mageai /app/run_app.sh mage start demo_project

Running Mage without Docker

If you installed Mage using pip, conda, poetry, etc. and are running it using the mage start command, then you need to set the environment variable on your workstation.

macOS

Run the following command to set environment variables:

export REQUIRE_USER_AUTHENTICATION=1

Windows

Read Microsoft’s instructions on how to do this.

Default owner user

When Mage starts, if there is no existing owner user, then a new user will be created with owner permissions (e.g. all permissions).

The owner user can create, edit, and delete other users.

Here are the default credentials for the owner user to sign in with:

Field	Value
Email	[e-mail]
Password	admin

Sign in page

Before using Mage, users will have to sign in at /sign-in. If you go to a page that requires authentication and you’re not signed in, you’ll be redirected to the sign in page.

User management page

If you’re signed in as the owner user, you’ll have access to the user management page at /settings/workspace/users.

On this page, you can:

1. Add new users
2. Edit existing users
3. Reset user passwords
4. Delete users

Roles and permissions

Role	Permissions
Viewer	Can read.
Editor	Can do everything a viewer can, create, update, and delete.
Admin	Can do everything a viewer can, an editor can, and manage users who are viewers/editors (update usernames, emails, passwords, and make viewers editors or vice versa.
Owner	In addition to what admins can do, add and delete users. Manage all users, including admins/owners. Make other users any role, including admins/owners.

LDAP

If you want to enable LDAP authentication mode, Set the following environment variable name and value:

Variable name	Value
AUTHENTICATION_MODE	ldap

In this case, you will also need to configure the following variables:

Variable name	Description	Example value
LDAP_ADMIN_USERNAME	The username of the owner user created on first run	admin
LDAP_SERVER	The host of the LDAP server	ldap.example.com
LDAP_BIND_DN	The bind_dn for the LDAP account that will be used to perform search operations	cn=admin,dc=example,dc=com
LDAP_BIND_PASSWORD	The password for the LDAP account that will be used to perform search operations	password
LDAP_BASE_DN	The base DN of the server	dc=example,dc=com
LDAP_AUTHENTICATION_FILTER	The authentication filter to use in template format using the variable username	(&(|(objectClass=inetOrgPerson)(objectClass=groupOfNames))(cn={username}))
LDAP_AUTHORIZATION_FILTER	The authorization filter to use in template format using the variable user_dn	(&(objectClass=groupOfNames)(cn=group)(member={user_dn}))
LDAP_GROUP_FIELD	Name of user attribute to use to determine a user’s LDAP group.	memberOf
LDAP_ROLES_MAPPING	Mapping of user LDAP group to Mage roles. Must be in JSON string format.	'{"Admin": ["Admin"]}'
LDAP_DEFAULT_ACCESS	Default access for a new user authenticated through LDAP (default user will have no role)	Viewer, Editor, Admin

Make sure to adjust the values of the variables to match your LDAP configuration.

When LDAP authentication is enabled, users will need to provide their LDAP credentials to log in to the system. Once authenticated, Mage will use the authorization filter to determine the user’s permissions based on their LDAP group membership.

Authenticated requests

If you require user authentication by turning it on via the environment variable mentioned above, then each API request the front-end client makes to the backend server will include an API key and an OAuth2 token.

The API key and OAuth2 token is used to authenticate the incoming request. If the requester doesn’t have the proper permissions, the backend server will respond with a 4XX error code.

API errors

If a page loads and no data is visible, it could either mean there is no data or the user doesn’t have the proper permissions.

If there is no visible error message on the page, you can view the browser’s network tab and inspect the API request response to view the full error details (we’re working on showing better errors and making it easier to display them).

Learn how to view the network requests in Chrome by following these instructions.

Error code	Description
401	Expired OAuth token.
401	Invalid OAuth token.
402	Record is invalid.
403	Invalid API key.
403	Unauthorized access.
404	Record not found.
500	API resource error.