Identity is a central focus of most applications. The topic involves authenticating that the user is who they claim to be, and authorizing access to appropriate aspects of your application.
Both of these concepts are bundled in the topic of Identity. It’s been a problem for which there have been many different solutions over time. Remember the Microsoft Passport and the Wallet identity took kits Microsoft released over a decade ago. Those implementations didn’t really take off. But, just a few years later, we find that people are willing to use their Facebook account as an authentication tool, and now there are even more third party authentication integrations.
So, I have been getting into the Dot Net Identity stack to more fully understand it’s integration with different authentication and authorization authorities, and how they have encapsulated them in a common framework. I’m still digging into the Claims Based mindset around which much of their framework builds. A user is authenticated by some claims authority, and as part of that authentication a set of claims are provided.
Now all your app has to do is to instantiate the appropriate claims provider to match the client authentication source. Given the returned set of claims, the application behavior can be modified to work as your business requirements dictate.
At this point I’m interested in NTFS, OWIN, Linked In, FaceBook, Microsoft, and an application database as claims providers. As I dig into this more I’ll share how this works in our favor, and how it can simplify our applications when it comes to Identity.
Cheers,
Ben