Implementing CSRF Protection in Django for Enhanced User Security
I'm testing a new approach and I'm a bit lost with I tried several approaches but none seem to work..... Currently developing a web application in Django that requires enhanced user security measures. I've read that Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) protection is crucial for safeguarding user actions, particularly when forms are involved. I've already enabled the built-in CSRF middleware, but I'm uncertain about the best way to implement this in my forms and handle AJAX requests effectively. In my HTML templates, I’ve added the `{% csrf_token %}` tag to my forms, which looks like this: ```html <form method="post" action="/submit/"> {% csrf_token %} <input type="text" name="username"> <button type="submit">Submit</button> </form> ``` However, when trying to submit a form using AJAX, I'm not sure how to include the CSRF token in the request headers. I've seen some examples where developers use jQuery to grab the token from the cookie and send it in the headers, but I’m using Fetch API instead. Here’s the code snippet I tried: ```javascript const csrfToken = document.querySelector('[name=csrfmiddlewaretoken]').value; fetch('/submit/', { method: 'POST', headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json', 'X-CSRFToken': csrfToken }, body: JSON.stringify({ username: 'testuser' }) }) .then(response => response.json()) .then(data => console.log(data)); ``` This approach works fine for other AJAX requests, but I keep receiving a 403 Forbidden error when I try to submit the form using this method. I suspect it might be related to how I'm fetching the CSRF token or maybe the backend isn't recognizing my AJAX request as valid. Additionally, are there any specific practices or Django settings to ensure that CSRF protection doesn’t interfere with user experience, especially for authenticated users? Any guidance on this would be greatly appreciated! I'm on Linux using the latest version of Python. Am I missing something obvious? I'm working on a REST API that needs to handle this. I'm using Python LTS in this project.