# Contributing to authentik
:+1::tada: Thanks for taking the time to contribute! :tada::+1:
The following is a set of guidelines for contributing to authentik and its components, which are hosted in the [goauthentik Organization](https://github.com/goauthentik) on GitHub. These are mostly guidelines, not rules. Use your best judgment, and feel free to propose changes to this document in a pull request.
#### Table Of Contents
[Code of Conduct](#code-of-conduct)
[I don't want to read this whole thing, I just have a question!!!](#i-dont-want-to-read-this-whole-thing-i-just-have-a-question)
[What should I know before I get started?](#what-should-i-know-before-i-get-started)
* [The components](#the-components)
* [authentik's structure](#authentiks-structure)
[How Can I Contribute?](#how-can-i-contribute)
* [Reporting Bugs](#reporting-bugs)
* [Suggesting Enhancements](#suggesting-enhancements)
* [Your First Code Contribution](#your-first-code-contribution)
* [Pull Requests](#pull-requests)
[Styleguides](#styleguides)
* [Git Commit Messages](#git-commit-messages)
* [Python Styleguide](#python-styleguide)
* [Documentation Styleguide](#documentation-styleguide)
## Code of Conduct
Basically, don't be a dickhead. This is an open-source non-profit project, that is made in the free time of Volunteers. If there's something you dislike or think can be done better, tell us! We'd love to hear any suggestions for improvement.
## I don't want to read this whole thing I just have a question!!!
Either [create a question on GitHub](https://github.com/goauthentik/authentik/issues/new?assignees=&labels=question&template=question.md&title=) or join [the Discord server](https://discord.gg/jg33eMhnj6)
## What should I know before I get started?
### The components
authentik consists of a few larger components:
- *authentik* the actual application server, is described below.
- *outpost-proxy* is a Go application based on a forked version of oauth2_proxy, which does identity-aware reverse proxying.
- *outpost-ldap* is a Go LDAP server that uses the *authentik* application server as its backend
- *web* is the web frontend, both for administrating and using authentik. It is written in TypeScript using lit-html and the PatternFly CSS Library.
- *website* is the Website/documentation, which uses docusaurus.
### authentik's structure
authentik is at it's very core a Django project. It consists of many individual django applications. These applications are intended to separate concerns, and they may share code between each other.
These are the current packages:
```
authentik
├── admin - Administrative tasks and APIs, no models (Version updates, Metrics, system tasks)
├── api - General API Configuration (Routes, Schema and general API utilities)
├── core - Core authentik functionality, central routes, core Models
├── crypto - Cryptography, currently used to generate and hold Certificates and Private Keys
├── events - Event Log, middleware and signals to generate signals
├── flows - Flows, the FlowPlanner and the FlowExecutor, used for all flows for authentication, authorization, etc
├── lib - Generic library of functions, few dependencies on other packages.
├── managed - Handle managed models and their state.
├── outposts - Configure and deploy outposts on kubernetes and docker.
├── policies - General PolicyEngine
│ ├── dummy - A Dummy policy used for testing
│ ├── event_matcher - Match events based on different criteria
│ ├── expiry - Check when a user's password was last set
│ ├── expression - Execute any arbitrary python code
│ ├── hibp - Check a password against HaveIBeenPwned
│ ├── password - Check a password against several rules
│ └── reputation - Check the user's/client's reputation
├── providers
│ ├── ldap - Provide LDAP access to authentik users/groups using an outpost
│ ├── oauth2 - OIDC-compliant OAuth2 provider
│ ├── proxy - Provides an identity-aware proxy using an outpost
│ └── saml - SAML2 Provider
├── recovery - Generate keys to use in case you lock yourself out
├── root - Root django application, contains global settings and routes
├── sources
│ ├── ldap - Sync LDAP users from OpenLDAP or Active Directory into authentik
│ ├── oauth - OAuth1 and OAuth2 Source
│ ├── plex - Plex source
│ └── saml - SAML2 Source
├── stages
│ ├── authenticator_duo - Configure a DUO authenticator
│ ├── authenticator_static - Configure TOTP backup keys
│ ├── authenticator_totp - Configure a TOTP authenticator
│ ├── authenticator_validate - Validate any authenticator
│ ├── authenticator_webauthn - Configure a WebAuthn authenticator
│ ├── captcha - Make the user pass a captcha
│ ├── consent - Let the user decide if they want to consent to an action
│ ├── deny - Static deny, can be used with policies
│ ├── dummy - Dummy stage to test
│ ├── email - Send the user an email and block execution until they click the link
│ ├── identification - Identify a user with any combination of fields
│ ├── invitation - Invitation system to limit flows to certain users
│ ├── password - Password authentication
│ ├── prompt - Arbitrary prompts
│ ├── user_delete - Delete the currently pending user
│ ├── user_login - Login the currently pending user
│ ├── user_logout - Logout the currently pending user
│ └── user_write - Write any currenetly pending data to the user.
└── tenants - Soft tennancy, configure defaults and branding per domain
```
This django project is running in gunicorn, which spawns multiple workers and threads. Gunicorn is run from a lightweight Go application which reverse-proxies it, handles static files and will eventually gain more functionality as more code is migrated to go.
There are also several background tasks which run in Celery, the root celery application is defined in `authentik.root.celery`.
## How Can I Contribute?
### Reporting Bugs
This section guides you through submitting a bug report for authentik. Following these guidelines helps maintainers and the community understand your report, reproduce the behavior, and find related reports.
Whenever authentik encounters an error, it will be logged as an Event with the type `system_exception`. This event type has a button to directly open a pre-filled GitHub issue form.
This form will have the full stack trace of the error that occurred and shouldn't contain any sensitive data.
### Suggesting Enhancements
This section guides you through submitting an enhancement suggestion for authentik, including completely new features and minor improvements to existing functionality. Following these guidelines helps maintainers and the community understand your suggestion and find related suggestions.
When you are creating an enhancement suggestion, please fill in [the template](https://github.com/goauthentik/authentik/issues/new?assignees=&labels=enhancement&template=feature_request.md&title=), including the steps that you imagine you would take if the feature you're requesting existed.
### Your First Code Contribution
#### Local development
authentik can be run locally, all though depending on which part you want to work on, different pre-requisites are required.
This is documented in the [developer docs](https://goauthentik.io/developer-docs/?utm_source=github)
### Pull Requests
The process described here has several goals:
- Maintain authentik's quality
- Fix problems that are important to users
- Engage the community in working toward the best possible authentik
- Enable a sustainable system for authentik's maintainers to review contributions
Please follow these steps to have your contribution considered by the maintainers:
1. Follow the [styleguides](#styleguides)
2. After you submit your pull request, verify that all [status checks](https://help.github.com/articles/about-status-checks/) are passing What if the status checks are failing?
If a status check is failing, and you believe that the failure is unrelated to your change, please leave a comment on the pull request explaining why you believe the failure is unrelated. A maintainer will re-run the status check for you. If we conclude that the failure was a false positive, then we will open an issue to track that problem with our status check suite.