python-joseによるJWTの署名と検証
クレーム、有効期限、オーディエンスを検証しながらJWTをエンコード・デコードし、改ざんからルートを保護します。
「python-joseによるJWTの署名と検証」はCoddyKit上の無料FastAPI Backend Development Bootcampレッスンです。 これはレッスン2/4です。 下記で完全なレッスンを無料で読むことができます。その後、ブラウザ内の組み込みコードエディタと24時間対応のAIチューターでハンズオン演習できます。 これはFastAPI Backend Development Bootcamp学習パスの一部であり、ウェブとCoddyKitアプリ全体で進捗が同期されます。 FastAPI Backend Development Bootcampコースには全4レッスンが含まれています。
このレッスンの一部はまだ翻訳されておらず、英語で表示されています。
Why JWTs for Stateless Auth
A JWT (JSON Web Token) is a compact, signed token that carries claims about a user. Once your FastAPI app issues a JWT at login, the client sends it back on every request, and you verify it without touching a session store.
- Stateless — the server doesn't store sessions; the signature proves authenticity.
- Tamper-evident — any change to the payload invalidates the signature.
- Portable — the same token works across services that share the secret or public key.
In this lesson we use python-jose to encode (sign) and decode (verify) tokens with claims, expiry, and audience validation.
Anatomy of a JWT
A JWT has three Base64URL parts joined by dots: header.payload.signature.
- Header — algorithm and token type, e.g.
{"alg": "HS256", "typ": "JWT"}. - Payload — the claims (data) such as
sub,exp,aud. - Signature — keyed hash of header + payload, proving the token wasn't altered.
Standard (registered) claims you'll use most: sub (subject/user id), exp (expiry), iat (issued at), aud (audience), iss (issuer). The payload is only encoded, not encrypted, so never put secrets like passwords inside it.
Installing and Importing python-jose
Install python-jose with its cryptography backend so RSA and EC algorithms work too:
pip install "python-jose[cryptography]"
The two functions you'll use constantly live in jose.jwt: jwt.encode(...) to sign and jwt.decode(...) to verify. Errors are raised as subclasses of JWTError, which lets you catch all token problems cleanly.
from jose import jwt
from jose.exceptions import JWTError, ExpiredSignatureError, JWTClaimsError
print("encode:", callable(jwt.encode))
print("decode:", callable(jwt.decode))
print("base error:", issubclass(ExpiredSignatureError, JWTError))Encoding Your First Token
To sign a token, pass a claims dict, a secret key, and an algorithm. For symmetric signing we use HS256, where the same secret signs and verifies.
- Put the user id in
sub— it must be a string. - Keep the secret long and random; load it from an environment variable in real apps.
The result is a single URL-safe string you can hand back to the client.
from jose import jwt
SECRET = "a-very-long-random-secret-string-change-me"
ALGO = "HS256"
claims = {"sub": "user-42", "role": "admin"}
token = jwt.encode(claims, SECRET, algorithm=ALGO)
print(token[:40] + "...")
print("dot count:", token.count("."))Decoding and Verifying
jwt.decode does two things at once: it checks the signature and returns the claims. If the signature is wrong, it raises a JWTError instead of returning data.
- Pass the same algorithm(s) you signed with via
algorithms=[...]— never trust the algorithm advertised in the token header alone. - A successful decode means the token is authentic and untampered.
The example below signs a token, then verifies it and reads the claims back out.
from jose import jwt
SECRET = "a-very-long-random-secret-string-change-me"
token = jwt.encode({"sub": "user-42", "role": "admin"}, SECRET, algorithm="HS256")
payload = jwt.decode(token, SECRET, algorithms=["HS256"])
print("sub:", payload["sub"])
print("role:", payload["role"])Detecting Tampering
This is the whole point of signing. If an attacker flips a single character in the payload, verification fails because the signature no longer matches.
- Catch
JWTErrorto reject the request with401 Unauthorized. - Never decode with
verify_signature=Falsein production — that skips the security check entirely.
The snippet corrupts a token and shows the verification raising an error.
from jose import jwt
from jose.exceptions import JWTError
SECRET = "a-very-long-random-secret-string-change-me"
token = jwt.encode({"sub": "user-42"}, SECRET, algorithm="HS256")
# Tamper: change the last character of the token
tampered = token[:-1] + ("A" if token[-1] != "A" else "B")
try:
jwt.decode(tampered, SECRET, algorithms=["HS256"])
print("accepted (BAD)")
except JWTError as e:
print("rejected tampered token:", type(e).__name__)Adding Expiry with exp
Tokens should be short-lived. The exp claim is a Unix timestamp (seconds since epoch, UTC). python-jose automatically rejects expired tokens at decode time, raising ExpiredSignatureError.
- Compute expiry with timezone-aware UTC:
datetime.now(timezone.utc) + timedelta(...). - Access tokens are typically 15-30 minutes; refresh tokens last longer.
You can pass a datetime or an int for exp — jose converts datetimes to timestamps for you.
from datetime import datetime, timedelta, timezone
from jose import jwt
SECRET = "a-very-long-random-secret-string-change-me"
expire = datetime.now(timezone.utc) + timedelta(minutes=30)
claims = {"sub": "user-42", "exp": expire}
token = jwt.encode(claims, SECRET, algorithm="HS256")
payload = jwt.decode(token, SECRET, algorithms=["HS256"])
print("exp claim (unix):", payload["exp"])
print("valid for ~30 min")Handling Expired Tokens
When a token's exp is in the past, jwt.decode raises ExpiredSignatureError (a subclass of JWTError). Handle it separately so you can tell the client to refresh instead of re-login.
- Catch
ExpiredSignatureErrorfirst, then a genericJWTError. - jose applies a small default leeway for clock skew; you can tune it with
options.
Here we issue an already-expired token to prove the check fires.
from datetime import datetime, timedelta, timezone
from jose import jwt
from jose.exceptions import ExpiredSignatureError, JWTError
SECRET = "a-very-long-random-secret-string-change-me"
past = datetime.now(timezone.utc) - timedelta(minutes=5)
token = jwt.encode({"sub": "user-42", "exp": past}, SECRET, algorithm="HS256")
try:
jwt.decode(token, SECRET, algorithms=["HS256"])
except ExpiredSignatureError:
print("token expired -> ask client to refresh")
except JWTError:
print("other token error")Audience Validation with aud
The aud (audience) claim names who the token is for — e.g. your API. If you set it when encoding, you must pass the matching audience= when decoding, or jose raises JWTClaimsError.
- Prevents a token minted for one service from being replayed against another.
- If you omit
audience=but the token hasaud, validation fails — pass it explicitly.
The example signs with an audience and validates it on decode.
from jose import jwt
from jose.exceptions import JWTClaimsError
SECRET = "a-very-long-random-secret-string-change-me"
token = jwt.encode(
{"sub": "user-42", "aud": "fastapi-bootcamp-api"},
SECRET, algorithm="HS256",
)
payload = jwt.decode(token, SECRET, algorithms=["HS256"], audience="fastapi-bootcamp-api")
print("aud ok:", payload["aud"])
try:
jwt.decode(token, SECRET, algorithms=["HS256"], audience="some-other-api")
except JWTClaimsError as e:
print("wrong audience rejected:", type(e).__name__)A Reusable Token Helper
In a real bootcamp project you wrap signing and verifying in small helpers so routes stay clean. Bundle the standard claims — sub, exp, iat, aud, iss — in one place.
create_access_tokenbuilds claims and signs.verify_tokendecodes with all validations and returns the payload or raises.
This pure-Python module has no FastAPI imports, so it's easy to unit-test on its own.
from datetime import datetime, timedelta, timezone
from jose import jwt
from jose.exceptions import JWTError
SECRET = "a-very-long-random-secret-string-change-me"
ALGO, AUD, ISS = "HS256", "fastapi-bootcamp-api", "auth-service"
def create_access_token(sub, minutes=30):
now = datetime.now(timezone.utc)
claims = {"sub": sub, "iat": now, "exp": now + timedelta(minutes=minutes),
"aud": AUD, "iss": ISS}
return jwt.encode(claims, SECRET, algorithm=ALGO)
def verify_token(token):
return jwt.decode(token, SECRET, algorithms=[ALGO], audience=AUD, issuer=ISS)
t = create_access_token("user-42")
print("verified sub:", verify_token(t)["sub"])Protecting a FastAPI Route
In FastAPI you plug verification into a dependency. OAuth2PasswordBearer pulls the token from the Authorization: Bearer ... header, then your dependency verifies it and returns the current user — or raises HTTPException(401).
- Any route that declares
Depends(get_current_user)is now protected. - Convert
JWTErrorinto a proper 401 so tampered or expired tokens are rejected with the right status.
This is framework code, so it runs inside a server, not a standalone judge.
from fastapi import Depends, FastAPI, HTTPException, status
from fastapi.security import OAuth2PasswordBearer
from jose import jwt
from jose.exceptions import JWTError
app = FastAPI()
oauth2_scheme = OAuth2PasswordBearer(tokenUrl="login")
SECRET, ALGO, AUD = "change-me", "HS256", "fastapi-bootcamp-api"
def get_current_user(token: str = Depends(oauth2_scheme)):
creds_exc = HTTPException(
status_code=status.HTTP_401_UNAUTHORIZED,
detail="Could not validate credentials",
headers={"WWW-Authenticate": "Bearer"},
)
try:
payload = jwt.decode(token, SECRET, algorithms=[ALGO], audience=AUD)
except JWTError:
raise creds_exc
user_id = payload.get("sub")
if user_id is None:
raise creds_exc
return user_id
@app.get("/me")
def read_me(user_id: str = Depends(get_current_user)):
return {"user_id": user_id}Quick Check: Audience Validation
You sign tokens with aud="fastapi-bootcamp-api". A teammate's decode call sometimes throws JWTClaimsError even for freshly issued, untampered tokens. What is the most likely cause?
Recap: Signing and Verifying JWTs
You can now mint and validate JWTs with python-jose end to end:
- Encode claims with
jwt.encode(claims, secret, algorithm="HS256"); keepsuba string and the secret in an env var. - Decode with
jwt.decode(token, secret, algorithms=[...])and always pin the algorithm list. - Tampering breaks the signature and raises
JWTError— reject with 401. - Expiry via
expauto-raisesExpiredSignatureError; handle it to trigger refresh. - Audience via
audmust be matched withaudience=on decode or you getJWTClaimsError. - In FastAPI, verify inside a
Depends(get_current_user)dependency and convert errors intoHTTPException(401).
Next up: refresh tokens and rotating signing keys.
よくある質問
「python-joseによるJWTの署名と検証」レッスンは無料ですか?
はい。「python-joseによるJWTの署名と検証」の完全なテキストはこのウェブで無料で読めます。インタラクティブに演習し(組み込みコードエディタと24時間対応のAIチューター)、FastAPI Backend Development Bootcampコースの残りをアンロックするには、CoddyKit PROにアップグレードしてください。 FastAPI Backend Development Bootcampコースには全4レッスンが含まれています。
「python-joseによるJWTの署名と検証」で何を学びますか?
クレーム、有効期限、オーディエンスを検証しながらJWTをエンコード・デコードし、改ざんからルートを保護します。 ブラウザで直接実行するハンズオンコードでFastAPI Backend Development Bootcampを演習し、24時間対応のAIチューターがレッスンを進める中での質問に答えます。
FastAPI Backend Development Bootcampを始めるのに経験は必要ですか?
事前経験は必要ありません。CoddyKitのFastAPI Backend Development Bootcampは初級者から上級者向けに構成されているため、ここから始めるか最初から始めて、自分のペースで進むことができます。 これはレッスン2/4です。
「python-joseによるJWTの署名と検証」レッスンにはどのくらい時間がかかりますか?
ほとんどのCoddyKitレッスンは約5~10分かかります。各レッスンはコンパクトでインタラクティブなので、着実に進歩し、ウェブとアプリ全体で正確に前回の場所から再開できます。
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このコースのすべてのレッスン
- OAuth2パスワードフローとトークン発行
- python-joseによるJWTの署名と検証
- リフレッシュトークンとトークンローテーション
- スコープベースの認可とロールガード