Store the password+salt as a hash and the salt. Take a look at how Django does it: basic docs and source.
In the db they store <type of hash>$<salt>$<hash>
in a single char field. You can also store the three parts in separate fields.
The function to set the password:
def set_password(self, raw_password):
import random
algo = 'sha1'
salt = get_hexdigest(algo, str(random.random()), str(random.random()))[:5]
hsh = get_hexdigest(algo, salt, raw_password)
self.password = '%s$%s$%s' % (algo, salt, hsh)
The get_hexdigest is just a thin wrapper around some hashing algorithms. You can use hashlib for that. Something like hashlib.sha1('%s%s' % (salt, hash)).hexdigest()
And the function to check the password:
def check_password(raw_password, enc_password):
"""
Returns a boolean of whether the raw_password was correct. Handles
encryption formats behind the scenes.
"""
algo, salt, hsh = enc_password.split('$')
return hsh == get_hexdigest(algo, salt, raw_password)