I'd been searching for a way to do cookie based authentication/sessions in Google App Engine because I don't like the idea of memcache based sessions, and I also don't like the idea of forcing users to create google accounts just to use a website. I stumbled across someone's posting that mentioned some signed cookie functions from the Tornado framework and it looks like what I need. What I have in mind is storing a user's id in a tamper proof cookie, and maybe using a decorator for the request handlers to test the authentication status of the user, and as a side benefit the user id will be available to the request handler for datastore work and such. The concept would be similar to forms authentication in ASP.NET. This code comes from the web.py module of the Tornado framework. According to the docstrings, it "Signs and timestamps a cookie so it cannot be forged" and "Returns the given signed cookie if it validates, or None." I've tried to use it in an App Engine Project, but I don't understand the nuances of trying to get these methods to work in the context of the request handler. Can someone show me the right way to do this without losing the functionality that the FriendFeed developers put into it? The set_secure_cookie, and get_secure_cookie portions are the most important, but it would be nice to be able to use the other methods as well. #!/usr/bin/env python import Cookie import base64 import time import hashlib import hmac import datetime import re import calendar import email.utils import logging def _utf8(s): if isinstance(s, unicode): return s.encode("utf-8") assert isinstance(s, str) return s def _unicode(s): if isinstance(s, str): try: return s.decode("utf-8") except UnicodeDecodeError: raise HTTPError(400, "Non-utf8 argument") assert isinstance(s, unicode) return s def _time_independent_equals(a, b): if len(a) != len(b): return False result = 0 for x, y in zip(a, b): result |= ord(x) ^ ord(y) return result == 0 def cookies(self): """A dictionary of Cookie.Morsel objects.""" if not hasattr(self,"_cookies"): self._cookies = Cookie.BaseCookie() if "Cookie" in self.request.headers: try: self._cookies.load(self.request.headers["Cookie"]) except: self.clear_all_cookies() return self._cookies def _cookie_signature(self,*parts): self.require_setting("cookie_secret","secure cookies") hash = hmac.new(self.application.settings["cookie_secret"], digestmod=hashlib.sha1) for part in parts:hash.update(part) return hash.hexdigest() def get_cookie(self,name,default=None): """Gets the value of the cookie with the given name,else default.""" if name in self.cookies: return self.cookies[name].value return default def set_cookie(self,name,value,domain=None,expires=None,path="/", expires_days=None): """Sets the given cookie name/value with the given options.""" name = _utf8(name) value = _utf8(value) if re.search(r"[\x00-\x20]",name + value): # Don't let us accidentally inject bad stuff raise ValueError("Invalid cookie %r:%r" % (name,value)) if not hasattr(self,"_new_cookies"): self._new_cookies = [] new_cookie = Cookie.BaseCookie() self._new_cookies.append(new_cookie) new_cookie[name] = value if domain: new_cookie[name]["domain"] = domain if expires_days is not None and not expires: expires = datetime.datetime.utcnow() + datetime.timedelta( days=expires_days) if expires: timestamp = calendar.timegm(expires.utctimetuple()) new_cookie[name]["expires"] = email.utils.formatdate( timestamp,localtime=False,usegmt=True) if path: new_cookie[name]["path"] = path def clear_cookie(self,name,path="/",domain=None): """Deletes the cookie with the given name.""" expires = datetime.datetime.utcnow() - datetime.timedelta(days=365) self.set_cookie(name,value="",path=path,expires=expires, domain=domain) def clear_all_cookies(self): """Deletes all the cookies the user sent with this request.""" for name in self.cookies.iterkeys(): self.clear_cookie(name) def set_secure_cookie(self,name,value,expires_days=30,**kwargs): """Signs and timestamps a cookie so it cannot be forged""" timestamp = str(int(time.time())) value = base64.b64encode(value) signature = self._cookie_signature(name,value,timestamp) value = "|".join([value,timestamp,signature]) self.set_cookie(name,value,expires_days=expires_days,**kwargs) def get_secure_cookie(self,name,include_name=True,value=None): """Returns the given signed cookie if it validates,or None""" if value is None:value = self.get_cookie(name) if not value:return None parts = value.split("|") if len(parts) != 3:return None if include_name: signature = self._cookie_signature(name,parts[0],parts[1]) else: signature = self._cookie_signature(parts[0],parts[1]) if not _time_independent_equals(parts[2],signature): logging.warning("Invalid cookie signature %r",value) return None timestamp = int(parts[1]) if timestamp < time.time() - 31 * 86400: logging.warning("Expired cookie %r",value) return None try: return base64.b64decode(parts[0]) except: return None uid=1234|1234567890|d32b9e9c67274fa062e2599fd659cc14 Parts: 1. uid is the name of the key 2. 1234 is your value in clear 3. 1234567890 is the timestamp 4. d32b9e9c67274fa062e2599fd659cc14 is the signature made from the value and the timestamp