I'm currently working on an application that will likely be deployed amongst various organizations within my current workplace. I need to develop a testable and properly designed authentication framework so that for each implementation folks can choose to use either Windows Authentication, Forms Authentication, a home-grown Single-SignOn system OR OpenID.
So given ASP.NET MVC (and in particular I'm using the S#arp Architecture framework) how should I go about doing this?
Ideally it would be nice if folks can simply make changes to the web.config file in each case.
Thanks
ASP .NET MVC supports ASP .NET membership provider, making it easier for you to handle Windows/Forms Authentication without any hassle. As long as you specify the required information on the web.config. The default site comes with an example.
For other options of implementation, Kigg has an OpenID implementation which also includes the unit testing code.
I guess that after learning how those work you'll find a way to include your "home-grown Single-SignOn" authentication framework :P
Update:
In order to use the membership provider using your own users table, you must implement a custom provider. The configuration through the web.config will be available anyways, but you'll need to create a class which implements the MembershipProvider abstract class.
Here's a link to a video and some source code explaining how to achieve this.
Related
I have two applications, one in asp.net and the other in asp.net core. I want to share a common database, as well as the same login. Ie, a user can register via asp.net application, and then their identity will be shared with asp.net core application.
Is this possible? I notice that each have their own identity models, and I am looking for a way of sharing this, ie. some documentation to resolve this.
Looking for:
- Is this possible?
- Documentation and more information on implementation (how to)
I am resolving by use of Identity Server, which both applications will hook into. Will just take a bit of re-jigging.
As you know, Microsoft removed ASP.NET Web Configuration Tool in VS2013 and it is a bad downgrade for it. thanks THIS post that shows a way (but difficult) to use ASP.NET Configuration Tool.
so what is the easiest way to define memberships, roles, users, access rules and ...?
ASP.NET Web Configuration Tool was really simple and user friendly.
Any more suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Microsoft is moving membership system from Membership Provider to ASP.NET Identity.
However, if you want to use Membership Provider there is a new one called ASP.NET Universal Providers.
ASP.NET Universal Providers supports NuGet package, and the package will create the requires membership tags in web.config.
Setting up membership/roles isn't much difficult once you understand the basics. You will love to set things up directly in the web.config, once you start using it.
Check these:
Setting up Membership
Setting up authorization rules
I'm currently developing a web application that will use Facebook as a authentication service. Does it make sense to implement it as an ASP.NET Forms Authentication custom membership provider? While I made my research, I didn't come across any concrete significant advantage of using the Forms Authentication. However, it instinctively seems to me as a good thing to do, because aside from creating a completely custom implementation of authentication using Facebook, I didn't find any extensibility point inside ASP.NET where I could plug in the Facebook auth behavior.
Can you then tell me whether the Forms Authentication is a good idea or not. And if not, is there any other way than completely custom code (I'd like to avoid managing the session cookies, loading the current user, etc. manually).
I'm using ASP.NET MVC 3, Entity Framework and I'd like to avoid the Facebook C# SDK (the extensive use of dynamic types is a bit of a turnoff for me :-) ).
Thanks for any advice.
A simple answer is to use .NET 4.5 oAuth templates, they are incredibly easy to link Facebook up to forms authentication.
http://www.asp.net/vnext/overview/videos/oauth-in-the-default-aspnet-45-templates
However you may struggle to find a decent server if you are planning on releasing immediately. In a couple of months plenty of servers will support .NET 4.5.
The OAuth templates work for both v4.0 and v4.5 so you can publish them onto a server today itself :)
Most Real world web applications have at least one dll library behind them. If we use the ASP.NET membership provider, how can we call the Roles.IsInRole method in the dll?
The possibility of referencing HttpContext is not good. Because, we have a few console application tools that use the same dll to complete a few bulk operations.
It sounds like you need to decouple your Membership mechanism from ASP.NET.
There are some good resources here on how to reference the ASP.NET Membership Provider from Windows Forms applications, which would work in the same way for console applications.
The best one is here (in VB.NET).
However, all suffer the same basic problem, which is that a malicious user could change their configuration to use their own authorisation database. (ASP.NET configuration is not available to users so we don't have the same problem there.)
So a better approach would be to either directly query the ASP.NET membership databases from your code in ADO.NET (which isn't hard: they're fairly straightforward) or to roll your own implementation of the underlying Membership Provider interfaces (detailer on MSDN here). You could then have the ASP.NET Membership Provider call your own code to establish if a user is in a role, and use this code in the same way from your console application.
I've just been tasked with building a web application using ASP (.net) and am looking for some advice on where to start. In a nutshell the application needs to be able to.
Handle user verification / authentication
Handle sessions
Do SOAP messaging
The application is intended to act as a front end for system functions that are accessible via web service calls.
I intend to do a lot of work on the client side using JavaScript and am thinking of using ASP solely as the framework for the 3 items I listed above.
Appreciate any suggestions you may have.
Use Visual Studio 2008 if you can. Its support for Ajax client libraries and javascript intellisense is very good. (Check out the jQuery add in)
ASP.NET has built in Login controls (and the membership services mentioned by ChrisE), and also has Forms Authentication. Try to leverage these existing components and avoid using session to store user specific objects/data.
---session rant
Its sometimes unavoidable, but you should avoid it whenever you can. It incurs a burden on the webserver for each user, and that leads to some very difficult scaling problems. The FormsAuthentication Ticket has a value property that you can store about 4K worth of user data in - try to use that instead.
---End session rant
Try to use a MVC approach (not necessarily an ASP.NET MVC), but at least one that seperates your presentation / view layer from the data / model layer.
Create a default theme and use it. Most sites will need to have multiple themes later, and refactoring that will be a PIA.
If you need SOAP to interact with Non-.NET services then by all means use it. If you are only connecting to .NET services then look into WCF clients and services. They will give you more flexibility.
If you are doing the client work in javascript, then dont use the update panel. It adds lots of overhead.
Get FireFox + FireBug + YSlow, and IE8 (yeah its beta still). They will help you when dealing with the client end of debugging / styling.
Take a look at the rules for website performance, but take these with a grain of salt. They are intended for very large sites, and some of the items may not be applicable (CDN, DNS lookups, Redirects).
WCF for Soap -- I would also suggest picking this up:
alt ASP.NET 3.5 http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/518N8vYWf1L._SL500_AA240_.jpg
This book is in tutorial form -- and Jesse Liberty is a great teacher (as are his co-authors).
ASP.NET provides out of the box authentication/authorization through the SqlMembershipProvider and SqlRoleProvider classes, or you can use the ADMembershipProvider along with a custom RoleProvider to authenticate and authorize against an Active Directory setup.
Session handling is readily provided by ASP.NET as well, through an in-process server, an external StateServer service, or through a connection to SQL Server (and of course, you can provide a custom Session service if you need something different).
As Lou Franco mentioned, WCF provides the framework for the SOAP calls, and will blend in with your ASP.NET application quite handily.
If you are using ASP.NET Web Forms then for handling user authentication/verification I'd recommend ASP.NET Membership services http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/yh26yfzy.aspx because it does some of the heavy lifting for you and also helps you from making any elementary security mistakes.
This is not directly related to your requirements, but I'd suggest you study the differences between Web Site and Web Application. The sooner the better. Everything will go smoother if you understand how the project is managed.
You can start here: http://www.codersbarn.com/post/2008/06/ASPNET-Web-Site-versus-Web-Application-Project.aspx