ASP.NET MVC 5 OWIN Auhentication

Question

I have just started to know the MVC 5 and I am trying to use its built in owin authentication.

I need to implement a forms authentication with IIS, but the OWIN Authentication is complicated than i waited.

I have az Entity Framework Model with own User, Role and RoleUser tables and want to authenticate user by these tables.

I tried to figured it out, how the owin works on a sample mvc 5 application. It has an ApplicationUser class:

public class ApplicationUser : IdentityUser
{
}

public class ApplicationDbContext : IdentityDbContext<ApplicationUser>
{
    public ApplicationDbContext()
        : base("DefaultConnection")
    {
    }
}

My main problem is the IdentityUser. It is an own ASP.NET User class with implementation of IUser interface and connection of DbContext. I have an own User POCO entity from the EF model and i do not want to mix it with an ASP.NET IUser interface. I do know why, but the Id of IUser interface is string type, that is also not apply to me.

The owin async user sign in is the following:

private async Task SignInUserAsync(User user, bool isPersistent)
{
    AuthenticationManager.SignOut(DefaultAuthenticationTypes.ExternalCookie);
    ClaimsIdentity identity = await UserManager.CreateIdentityAsync(user, DefaultAuthenticationTypes.ApplicationCookie);
    AuthenticationManager.SignIn(new AuthenticationProperties() { IsPersistent = isPersistent }, identity);
}

It recommends to create a ClaimsIdentity type of identity to sign in user and the user property must implements IUser interface.

Big question: Is the owen suggested to use in my environment? I want to use my User Class with owin authentication, but i don't know how?

Thanks your help in advance!

Answer 1

You can ditch the entire ASP.NET Identity model and use your own components for password verification and roles/claim storage.

http://www.khalidabuhakmeh.com/asp-net-mvc-5-authentication-breakdown-part-deux

Membership/Identity and Forms Auth are two different features of id and access management. Microsoft documentation does not do a good job explaining the difference between the two. This is a short and sweet post that explains it. The article was written before OWIN, but the same principle applies.

http://brockallen.com/2012/06/04/membership-is-not-the-same-as-forms-authentication/

Answer 2

The best way I can figure is to have your POCO class derive from IdentityUser. Doing so you can add your POCO properties as part of your new class. After this, you can instantiate a new UserManager such as:

UserManager um = new UserManager<YourPocoDerivedFromIdentityUser>(new UserStore<YourPocoDerivedFromIdentityUSer>(new ApplicationDbContext())

using OWIN will allow you to easily integrate 3rd-party authentication, such as FB, Google. The OWIN team did a really good job integrating it with MVC.

If, however, your current authentication system works well I don't see why you'd wish to upgrade?

PS - http://www.apress.com/files/extra/ASP_NET_Identity_Chapters.pdf

You can find 3 chapters on the new Identity System here. They are a very good read and I highly recommend them for getting you started.