How to add a cookie based authenticationScheme in ASP.NET Core?

Question

I'd like to use the [Authorize] attribute in my controller classes to redirect users who are not signed in, to my sign in page. For authentication, I'd like to keep it simple and just use a session variable to track if someone is signed in or not.

I tried adding authentication to my startup class:

services.AddAuthentication()
            .AddCookie(options =>
            {
                options.AccessDeniedPath = new PathString("/Account/SignIn");
                options.LoginPath = new PathString("/Account/SignIn");
                options.LogoutPath = new PathString("/Home/SignOut");
            });

but am getting the error when I go to a controller with the [Authorize] attribute:

InvalidOperationException: No authenticationScheme was specified, and there was no DefaultChallengeScheme found.

I know I'm missing something, just not sure how to set up the authenticationScheme or use a default one.

Answer 1

You need to set the default AuthenticationScheme.

As the docs says

AuthenticationScheme passed to AddAuthentication sets the default authentication scheme for the app.

In your case

services.AddAuthentication(CookieAuthenticationDefaults.AuthenticationScheme)
            .AddCookie(options =>
            {
                options.AccessDeniedPath = new PathString("/Account/SignIn");
                options.LoginPath = new PathString("/Account/SignIn");
                options.LogoutPath = new PathString("/Home/SignOut");
            });