* * * * * python /home/path/to/project/manage.py mycommand

There is currently a blueprint regarding adding a sort of out of the box authentication which would solve this but I have not had time to work on it.

I also want to talk about security in the next release. HTTP basic authentication really should not be used without SSL/TLS for maximum security. The new out of the box authentication will not solve the security issue. Unless you don’t care about packet sniffing, passwords should be encrypted.

the suggested method is not compatible with having both open and restricted methods, I solved the problem with a tiny middleware and with the following directive in the virtual server conf:

WSGIPassAuthorization On

The middleware :

class HttpAuthMiddleware:
    """
    Simple HTTP-Basic auth for testing webservices
    """
    def process_request(self, request):
        auth_basic = request.META.get('HTTP_AUTHORIZATION')
        if auth_basic:
            import base64
            try:
                username , dummy,  password = base64.decodestring(auth_basic[6:]).partition(':')
                user = User.objects.get(username=username)
                if user.check_password(password):
                   request.user = user
            except User.DoesNotExist:
                pass
        return None

Edit: Changes to formatting made by David.