{"id": "authentication:authentication-actor", "page": "authentication", "ref": "authentication-actor", "title": "Actors", "content": "Through plugins, Datasette can support both authenticated users (with cookies) and authenticated API agents (via authentication tokens). The word \"actor\" is used to cover both of these cases. \n             Every request to Datasette has an associated actor value, available in the code as  request.actor . This can be  None  for unauthenticated requests, or a JSON compatible Python dictionary for authenticated users or API agents. \n             The actor dictionary can be any shape - the design of that data structure is left up to the plugins. A useful convention is to include an  \"id\"  string, as demonstrated by the \"root\" actor below. \n             Plugins can use the  actor_from_request(datasette, request)  hook to implement custom logic for authenticating an actor based on the incoming HTTP request.", "breadcrumbs": "[\"Authentication and permissions\"]", "references": "[]"}