Index: django/contrib/auth/backends.py
===================================================================
--- django/contrib/auth/backends.py	(Revision 7438)
+++ django/contrib/auth/backends.py	(Arbeitskopie)
@@ -68,3 +68,49 @@
             return User.objects.get(pk=user_id)
         except User.DoesNotExist:
             return None
+
+class RemoteUserAuthBackend:
+
+    def authenticate(self, username, password=None):
+        """
+        Authenticate user - RemoteUserAuth middleware passes REMOTE_USER
+        as username.
+        """
+        if password is not None:
+            return None
+        user = None
+        if username:
+            username = self.parse_user(username)
+            try:
+                user = User.objects.get(username=username)
+            except User.DoesNotExist:
+                user = self.unknown_user(username)
+                user = self.configure_user(user)
+        return user
+
+    def parse_user(self, username):
+        """ Parse the provided username.
+        Override this method if you need to do special things with the
+        username, like stripping @realm or cleaning something like
+        cn=x,dc=sas,etc.
+        """
+        return username
+
+    def get_user(self, user_id):
+        try:
+            return User.objects.get(pk=user_id)
+        except User.DoesNotExist:
+            return None
+
+    def unknown_user(self, username):
+        # Auto-create user
+        user = User.objects.create_user(username, '')
+        user.is_staff = False
+        user.save()
+        return user
+
+    def configure_user(self, user):
+        """ Configure a user after login.
+        i.e: to read group membership from LDAP and so on.
+        """
+        return user
Index: django/contrib/auth/middleware.py
===================================================================
--- django/contrib/auth/middleware.py	(Revision 7438)
+++ django/contrib/auth/middleware.py	(Arbeitskopie)
@@ -10,3 +10,21 @@
         assert hasattr(request, 'session'), "The Django authentication middleware requires session middleware to be installed. Edit your MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES setting to insert 'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware'."
         request.__class__.user = LazyUser()
         return None
+
+class RemoteUserAuthMiddleware(object):
+    def process_request(self, request):
+        from django.contrib.auth import authenticate, login
+        # AuthenticationMiddleware is required to create request.user
+        error = """The Django RemoteUserAuth middleware requires authentication middleware to be installed. Edit your MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES
+setting to insert 'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware' *before* the RemoteUserMiddleware class."""
+        assert hasattr(request, 'user'), error
+        if request.user.is_anonymous():
+            user = None
+            try:
+                user = authenticate(username=request.META['REMOTE_USER'])
+            except KeyError:
+                pass # No remote user available
+            if user is not None:
+                request.user = user    # set request.user to the authenticated user
+                login(request, user)   # auto-login the user to Django
+        return None
Index: django/contrib/auth/tests.py
===================================================================
--- django/contrib/auth/tests.py	(Revision 7438)
+++ django/contrib/auth/tests.py	(Arbeitskopie)
@@ -35,4 +35,42 @@
 []
 >>> a.user_permissions.all()
 []
-"""
\ Kein Zeilenvorschub am Ende der Datei
+"""
+
+import os
+import unittest
+from doctest import DocTestSuite
+from django.contrib.auth.models import User
+from django.contrib.auth.backends import RemoteUserAuthBackend
+from django.test.client import Client
+from django.conf import settings
+
+class HttpAuthTest(unittest.TestCase):
+    def setUp(self):
+        self.extra_headers = {'REMOTE_USER': 'iamnotanuser'}
+        self.curr_middleware = settings.MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES
+        self.curr_auth = settings.AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS
+
+        settings.MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES +=\
+            ('django.contrib.auth.middleware.RemoteUserAuthMiddleware', )
+        settings.AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS =\
+            ('django.contrib.auth.backends.RemoteUserAuthBackend',)
+
+    def testRemoteUserIsRespected(self):
+        c = Client()
+        extra_headers = {'REMOTE_USER': 'iamnotanuser'}
+        res = c.get('/', {}, **self.extra_headers)
+
+        u = User.objects.get(username='iamnotanuser')
+        # wow, the user was created! this works.
+
+    def tearDown(self):
+        # Restore settings to avoid breaking other tests.
+        settings.MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = self.curr_middleware
+        settings.AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS = self.curr_auth
+
+
+def suite():
+    doctest_suite = DocTestSuite()
+    http_auth_suite = unittest.TestLoader().loadTestsFromTestCase(HttpAuthTest)
+    return unittest.TestSuite([doctest_suite, http_auth_suite])
Index: docs/auth_remote_user.txt
===================================================================
--- docs/auth_remote_user.txt	(Revision 0)
+++ docs/auth_remote_user.txt	(Revision 0)
@@ -0,0 +1,52 @@
+======================================================
+Authenticating against REMOTE_USER from the Web Server
+======================================================
+
+Typically on intranet sites users are already authenticated (i.e. in a Windows
+domain) by the web server (i.e. using IIS Integrated Authentication).
+
+When the web server takes care of authentication it sets the ``REMOTE_USER`` HTTP
+header for use in the underlying application (i.e. Django). Then it's up to
+this application take care of the authorization.
+
+Django brings all you need to make use of the ``REMOTE_USER`` header bringing you
+one step further to single sign-on on enterprise infrastucure!
+
+We assume that you have already configured your web server to authenticate
+users, maybe with mod_auth_sspi in Apache, Integrated Authentication in IIS
+and so on.
+
+Configuring Django
+==================
+
+First of all, you must add the ``RemoteUserAuthMiddleware`` just **after**
+(never before) ``AuthenticationMiddleware``.
+
+If you want more control, you can inherited from ``RemoteUserAuthBackend`` and
+override a few methods:
+
+   * ``parse_user``: Should cleanup ``REMOTE_USER`` (i.e. strip @realm from
+     it). It takes the ``username`` as argument, and must return the cleaned
+     ``username``.
+   * ``unkown_user``: Should create and return a ``User`` object, will be
+     called when a ``User`` object does not exist for ``REMOTE_USER``. Takes
+     ``username`` as it's only argument.
+   * ``configure_user``: Will be called after ``unkown_user`` so you can
+     configure the recently created ``User`` object (in case you did not want
+     to override ``unkown_user``. Takes the ``User`` instance as an argument.
+     Should also return the ``User`` instance that represents the User.
+
+
+Examples:
+
+    settings.py::
+
+        MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = (
+            'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware',
+            'django.contrib.auth.middleware.RemoteUserAuthMiddleware',
+            ...
+            )
+            
+        AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS = (
+            'django.contrib.auth.backends.RemoteUserAuthBackend',
+        )
Index: docs/authentication.txt
===================================================================
--- docs/authentication.txt	(Revision 7438)
+++ docs/authentication.txt	(Arbeitskopie)
@@ -1020,6 +1020,15 @@
 database-based scheme, or you can use the default system in tandem with other
 systems.
 
+.. admonition:: Handling authentication at the web server
+
+    There's a very specific situation/scenario in which you want to handle
+    authentication at the web server's level (i.e. standard HTTP AUTH) and want
+    Django to honour this authentication. This is covered in a separate page:
+    `Authenticating against REMOTE_USER from the Web Server`_
+
+.. _Authenticating against REMOTE_USER from the Web Server: ../auth_remote_user/
+
 Specifying authentication backends
 ----------------------------------