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