Django application that provides utilities for preventing automated form spam.
Provides template tags, view decorators, and middleware to add and verify honeypot fields to forms.
Written by James Turk with contributions by Flavio Curella and Daniel Greenfeld.
Source: https://github.com/jamesturk/django-honeypot/
- python >= 3.8
- django >= 3.2
Be sure to add honeypot
to INSTALLED_APPS
in settings.py.
You will almost always need to define HONEYPOT_FIELD_NAME
which is the name to use for the honeypot field. Some sophisticated bots will attempt to avoid fields named honeypot, so it may be wise to name the field something slightly more realistic such as "phonenumber" or "body2".
HONEYPOT_VALUE
is an option that you can specify to populate the honeypot field, by default the honeypot field will be empty and any text entered into it will result in a failed POST. HONEYPOT_VALUE
can be a string or a callable that takes no arguments.
HONEYPOT_VERIFIER
is an advanced option that you can specify to validate the honeypot. The default verifier ensures that the contents of the honeypot field matches HONEYPOT_VALUE
. Using a combination of a callable for HONEYPOT_VALUE
and HONEYPOT_VERIFIER
it is possible to implement a more advanced technique such as using timestamps.
HONEYPOT_RESPONDER
can be used to replace the default response in case of an invalid honeypot.
It is possible to add honeypot fields to specific forms and ensure that specific views check for a valid honeypotin request.POST
. This can be accomplished by using the render_honeypot_field
template tag:
At the top of a template file include the line:
{% load honeypot %}
And then within any form including the tag:
{% render_honeypot_field "field_name" %}
will render a honeypot field named "field_name" that is hidden by default. The name of the honeypot field will default to HONEYPOT_FIELD_NAME
if one is not provided.
To ensure that the honeypot field is both present and correct you will need to use check_honeypot
decorator from honeypot.decorators
:
from honeypot.decorators import check_honeypot
@check_honeypot(field_name='hp_field_name')
def post_comment(request):
...
@check_honeypot
def other_post_view(request):
...
This decorator will ensure that a field exists in request.POST
that is named 'field_name'. @check_honeypot
without arguments will use the default HONEYPOT_FIELD_NAME
.
The same as above for Adding honeypot fields to specific forms and views but add the decorator to the post method making use of django's method_decorator.
from django.utils.decorators import method_decorator
from honeypot.decorators import check_honeypot
@method_decorator(check_honeypot, name='post')
class MyView(FormView):
...
Sometimes it is desirable to add honeypots to all forms site-wide. This is particularly useful when dealing with apps that render their own forms. For this purpose three middlewares are provided, similar in functionality to django's own CSRF middleware.
All of these middleware live in honeypot.middleware
.
HoneypotResponseMiddleware
analyzes the output of all responses and rewrites any forms that use method="POST"
to contain a honeypot field, just as if they had started with {% render_honeypot_field %}
. Borrowing heavily from django.contrib.csrf.middleware.CsrfResponseMiddleware
this middleware only rewrites responses with Content-Type text/html or application/xhtml+xml.
HoneypotViewMiddleware
ensures that for all incoming POST requests to views request.POST
contains a valid honeypot field as defined by the HONEYPOT_FIELD_NAME
, HONEYPOT_VALUE
, and HONEYPOT_VERIFIER
settings. The result is the same as if every view in your project were decorated with @check_honeypot
.
HoneypotMiddleware
is a combined middleware that applies both HoneypotResponseMiddleware
and HoneypotViewMiddleware
, this is the easiest way to get honeypot fields site-wide and can be used in many if not most cases. The middleware needs to be listed after CommonMiddleware
because the middleware changes the response. If you list it before CommonMiddleware
then the Content-Length
header won't reflect the changes.
There are two templates used by django-honeypot that can be used to control various aspects of how the honeypot functionality is presented to the user.
honeypot/honeypot_field.html
is used to render the honeypot field. It is given two context variables fieldname
and value
, corresponding to HONEYPOT_FIELD_NAME
and HONEYPOT_VALUE
or any overrides in effect (such as a custom field name passed to the template tag).
honeypot/honeypot_error.html
is the error page rendered when a bad request is intercepted. It is given the context variable fieldname
representing the name of the honeypot field.
To completely change the error page or what happens when a bad request is intercepted set HONEYPOT_RESPONDER
to a function accepting request
and context
kwargs and returning a HttpResponse
.
# settings.py
HONEYPOT_FIELD_NAME = 'text-message'
HONEYPOT_RESPONDER = 'your_app_name.views.honeypot_view_function'
# your_app_name/views.py
def honeypot_view_function(request, fieldname):
fieldname = fieldname
data = {
'ip_address': request.META['REMOTE_ADDR'],
'url_path': request.path,
}
print(f'django honeypot detect spam from ip: {data['ip_address']} in uri: {data['url_path']} and field: {fieldname}')
return render(request, "honeypot/honeypot_error.html", status=200)
# output:
# django honeypot detect spam from ip: 192.168.48.208 in uri: /contact/contact/ and field: {'fieldname': 'text-message'}
# plus http response with status code 200 and template 'honeypot/honeypot_error.html'