Providing “login_hint” on server side Azure Mobile App

Question

I am using Azure MobileServiceClient to authenticate with a mobile app. I want to enable a secure logout function, which involves deleting the cookies created by the web component. Otherwise anyone selecting "Login" will simply get logged in if there's an unexpired cookie lurking around. Deleting the cookies is working great.

Unfortunately, it means that a user returning to the same provider on the same device has to provide their username again (clearly, I don't want to store their password).

I found out how to make it work with Google. (Google OpenId doc) I simply provide a dictionary of parameters to the LoginAsync method. That dictionary contains the key "login_hint" and the user's email address (which, btw, has to be valid to work).

This doesn't seem to work for Facebook, Microsoft or Twitter accounts and I don't know why. I read a document that said that "login_hint" or "username" was supported by convention, but none of that seems to work.

Anyone have any experience (even a completely different approach) with this they can share?

TIA.

Answer 1

In order to implement IdP provided solutions like that, you need to move to a client-flow authentication. Client-Flow is when you use the IdP provided SDK to authenticate the user. Once the IdP has given you a token, you pass that token (silently) to Azure Mobile Apps to exchange it for a ZUMO token that you can use with the Azure Mobile Apps service.

Once you have the client-flow enabled, you can do anything that the IdP (Facebook, Google, etc.) will allow you to do. It's not really an Azure Mobile problem - more of an IdP problem.