Skip to main content

Configuring Ninject, Asp.Net Identity UserManager, DataProtectorTokenProvider with Owin

It can be bit tricky to configure both Ninject and Asp.Net Identity UserManager if some value is expected from DI to configure UserManager. We will look into configuring both and also use OwinContext to get UserManager.

As usual, all configuration need to be done on Startup.cs. It is just a convention but can be used with different name, the important thing is to decorate class with following attribute to make it Owin start-up:

 [assembly: OwinStartup(typeof(MyProject.Web.Startup))]  

Ninject configuration

Configuring Ninject kernel through method which would be used to register under Owin.

Startup.cs
     public IKernel CreateKernel()  
     {  
       var kernel = new StandardKernel();  
       try  
       {  
         //kernel.Bind<IHttpModule>().To<HttpApplicationInitializationHttpModule>();  
         // TODO: Put any other injection which are required.
         return kernel;  
       }  
       catch  
       {  
         kernel.Dispose();  
         throw;  
       }  
     }  

To register with Owin we need to have Ninject.Web.Common.OwinHost package which would provide an extension method for configuration with AppBuilder.

Startup.cs
     private IKernel kernel = null;  
     public void Configuration(IAppBuilder app)  
     {  
       kernel = CreateKernel();  
       app.UseNinjectMiddleware(() => kernel);
     }  

The kernel variable is created to save the Ninject configuration which can be used to get value from it.
Ex:

       var service = kernel.Get<IServiceLocater>();  
       setting = service.SystemService.GetSystemSetting();  


Asp.Net Identity User Manager Configuration

There is actually two way do configure it. The first to register Ninject with CreatePerOwinContext and retrieve kernel through Owin context parameter.

 app.CreatePerOwinContext(CreateKernel);  

and then

 app.CreatePerOwinContext<MyUserManager>((option, context) =>  
       {  
         var kernl = context.Get<IKernel>();  
         var setting = service.SystemService.GetSystemSetting();  
         var userStore = kernel.Get<IUserStore<MyUserDomain>>();  
         return new MyUserManager(userStore);  
       });  

The above is standard approach but while performance profiling I find issue on CreateKernel which gets keep disposing and calling multiple times even if we try to do in this way.

  app.CreatePerOwinContext(() => kernel); // using above variable but kept getting disposed.  

So, the best option is to create kernel variable like we did under Ninject Configuration section and utilizing same to get setting out of Ninject kernel.

MyUserManager.cs
  public static MyUserManager Create(IdentityFactoryOptions<MyUserManager> options,  
       IUserStore<MyUserDomain> userStore, UserPolicy userPolicy)  
     {  
       var manager = new MyUserManager(userStore);  

       // Settings that we want to have based on implementation of Manager class
       manager.UserPolicy = userPolicy; // Custom defined  
       manager.PasswordValidator = new CustomPasswordValidator(userPolicy);  
       manager.UserLockoutEnabledByDefault = false;  
       manager.DefaultAccountLockoutTimeSpan = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(userPolicy.DefaultAccountLockoutTimeSpan);  
       manager.MaxFailedAccessAttemptsBeforeLockout = userPolicy.FailedAttemptLockCount; 
 
       manager.UserTokenProvider = new DataProtectorTokenProvider<MyUserDomain, string>(  
         options.DataProtectionProvider.Create("Asp.Net Identity"))  
       {  
         TokenLifespan = TimeSpan.FromDays(userPolicy.TokenExpiryInDays)  
       };  

       return manager;  
     }  

Then simply register the context on Startup.cs

Startup.cs
 app.CreatePerOwinContext<MyUserManager>((options, context) =>  
       {  
         var userStore = kernel.Get<IUserStore<MyUserDomain>>();  
         return MyUserManager.Create(options, userStore, setting.UserPolicy);  
       });  

One general thing that I had not explained is to have proper initialization of DataProtectorTokenProvider. It is generally need to be initialized on Owin Startup, with IdentityFactoryOptions<MyUserManager> we are able to create data protection provider.

Consuming Asp.Net Identity User Manager

Now, we are all set to consume User Manager. Since, we have set it on Owin context, it can be used throughout of application by following approach:

 HttpContext.GetOwinContext().GetUserManager<MyUserManager>()  


Quick glance of entire Startup.cs
   public sealed class Startup  
   {  
     /// <summary>  
     /// Application level settings.  
     /// </summary>  
     private Setting setting;  

     /// <summary>  
     /// Ninject kernel for injection.  
     /// </summary>  
     private IKernel kernel = null;  

     /// <summary>  
     /// Configurations of the application.  
     /// </summary>  
     /// <param name="app">The application.</param>  
     public void Configuration(IAppBuilder app)  
     {  
       kernel = CreateKernel();  
       app.UseNinjectMiddleware(() => kernel);  

       // Populate setting from services.  
       var service = kernel.Get<IServiceLocater>();  
       setting = service.SystemService.GetSystemSetting();  

       app.CreatePerOwinContext<MyUserManager>(CreateUserManager);  
       ConfigureAuthentication(app);  
     }  

     /// <summary>  
     /// Creates the user manager.  
     /// </summary>  
     /// <param name="options">The options.</param>  
     /// <param name="context">The context.</param>  
     /// <returns>User manager instance.</returns>  
     private MyUserManager CreateUserManager(IdentityFactoryOptions<MyUserManager> options, IOwinContext context)  
     {  
       var userStore = kernel.Get<IUserStore<MyUserDomain>>();  
       return MyUserManager.Create(options, userStore, setting.UserPolicy);  
     }  

     /// <summary>  
     /// Configures the authentication.  
     /// </summary>  
     /// <param name="app">The application builder.</param>  
     private void ConfigureAuthentication(IAppBuilder app)  
     {  
       app.UseCookieAuthentication(new CookieAuthenticationOptions  
       {  
         AuthenticationType = DefaultAuthenticationTypes.ApplicationCookie,  
         LoginPath = new PathString("/Account/Login"),  
         SlidingExpiration = true,  
         ExpireTimeSpan = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(setting.System.Session.SessionTimeoutInMinutes)  
       });  
     }  

     /// <summary>  
     /// Creates the kernel.  
     /// </summary>  
     /// <returns></returns>  
     public IKernel CreateKernel()  
     {  
       var kernel = new StandardKernel();  
       try  
       {  
         //kernel.Bind<Func<IKernel>>().ToMethod(ctx => () => new Bootstrapper().Kernel);  
         //kernel.Bind<IHttpModule>().To<HttpApplicationInitializationHttpModule>();  
         // TODO: Put any other injection which are required.  
         return kernel;  
       }  
       catch  
       {  
         kernel.Dispose();  
         throw;  
       }  
     }  
   }  

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Making FluentValidation compatible with Swagger including Enum or fixed List support

FluentValidation is not directly compatible with Swagger API to validate models. But they do provide an interface through which we can compose Swagger validation manually. That means we look under FluentValidation validators and compose Swagger validator properties to make it compatible. More of all mapping by reading information from FluentValidation and setting it to Swagger Model Schema. These can be done on any custom validation from FluentValidation too just that proper schema property has to be available from Swagger. Custom validation from Enum/List values on FluentValidation using FluentValidation.Validators; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using static System.String; /// <summary> /// Validator as per list of items. /// </summary> /// <seealso cref="PropertyValidator" /> public class FixedListValidator : PropertyValidator { /// <summary> /// Gets the valid items /// <...

Elegantly dealing with TimeZones in MVC Core / WebApi

In any new application handling TimeZone/DateTime is mostly least priority and generally, if someone is concerned then it would be handled by using DateTime.UtcNow on codes while creating current dates and converting incoming Date to UTC to save on servers. Basically, the process is followed by saving DateTime to UTC format in a database and keep converting data to native format based on user region or single region in the application's presentation layer. The above is tedious work and have to be followed religiously. If any developer misses out the manual conversion, then that area of code/view would not work. With newer frameworks, there are flexible ways to deal/intercept incoming or outgoing calls to simplify conversion of TimeZones. These are steps/process to achieve it. 1. Central code for storing user's state about TimeZone. Also, central code for conversion logic based on TimeZones. 2. Dependency injection for the above class to ...

Using Redis distributed cache in dotnet core with helper extension methods

Redis cache is out process cache provider for a distributed environment. It is popular in Azure Cloud solution, but it also has a standalone application to operate upon in case of small enterprises application. How to install Redis Cache on a local machine? Redis can be used as a local cache server too on our local machines. At first install, Chocolatey https://chocolatey.org/ , to make installation of Redis easy. Also, the version under Chocolatey supports more commands and compatible with Official Cache package from Microsoft. After Chocolatey installation hit choco install redis-64 . Once the installation is done, we can start the server by running redis-server . Distributed Cache package and registration dotnet core provides IDistributedCache interface which can be overrided with our own implementation. That is one of the beauties of dotnet core, having DI implementation at heart of framework. There is already nuget package available to override IDistributedCache i...

Kendo MVC Grid DataSourceRequest with AutoMapper

Kendo Grid does not work directly with AutoMapper but could be managed by simple trick using mapping through ToDataSourceResult. The solution works fine until different filters are applied. The problems occurs because passed filters refer to view model properties where as database model properties are required after AutoMapper is implemented. So, the plan is to intercept DataSourceRequest  and modify names based on database model. To do that we are going to create implementation of  CustomModelBinderAttribute to catch calls and have our own implementation of DataSourceRequestAttribute from Kendo MVC. I will be using same source code from Kendo but will replace column names for different criteria for sort, filters, group etc. Let's first look into how that will be implemented. public ActionResult GetRoles([MyDataSourceRequest(GridId.RolesUserGrid)] DataSourceRequest request) { if (request == null) { throw new Argume...

Trim text in MVC Core through Model Binder

Trimming text can be done on client side codes, but I believe it is most suitable on MVC Model Binder since it would be at one place on infrastructure level which would be free from any manual intervention of developer. This would allow every post request to be processed and converted to a trimmed string. Let us start by creating Model binder using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.ModelBinding; using System; using System.Threading.Tasks; public class TrimmingModelBinder : IModelBinder { private readonly IModelBinder FallbackBinder; public TrimmingModelBinder(IModelBinder fallbackBinder) { FallbackBinder = fallbackBinder ?? throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(fallbackBinder)); } public Task BindModelAsync(ModelBindingContext bindingContext) { if (bindingContext == null) { throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(bindingContext)); } var valueProviderResult = bindingContext.ValueProvider.GetValue(bin...

LDAP with ASP.Net Identity Core in MVC with project.json

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), the name itself explain it. An application protocol used over an IP network to access the distributed directory information service. The first and foremost thing is to add references for consuming LDAP. This has to be done by adding reference from Global Assembly Cache (GAC) into project.json "frameworks": { "net461": { "frameworkAssemblies": { "System.DirectoryServices": "4.0.0.0", "System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement": "4.0.0.0" } } }, These  System.DirectoryServices  and  System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement  references are used to consume LDAP functionality. It is always better to have an abstraction for irrelevant items in consuming part. For an example, the application does not need to know about PrincipalContext or any other dependent items from those two references to make it extensible. So, we can begin wi...

Custom SPA engine, similar to MVC pattern by using TypeScript

Single Page Application, a fundamental requirement for SPA is to develop the application with XMLHttpRequest (XHR) or AJAX. That is only main requirement, other things come as add-on stuff. Advancements of SPA? In today's world, we do not want to be restricted with basic features or functionalities. We want everything like any new Phone comes in market with some new shiny feature. There are a lot of functionalities available with SPA libraries and could be extended with more extension to have richer and easier implementation. To be specific we shall refer it as frameworks, not libraries. Earlier days one-way, two-way data binding with templates were very minimum things to expect from frameworks. Now they talk about component structure, Virtual Dom, IOC, state management, performance etc. Why building own framework/library? What I believe and experienced is each SPA JS Frameworks has its own set of rules and structure that has to be followed. If we want to have our own dyn...

Handling JSON DateTime format on Asp.Net Core

This is a very simple trick to handle JSON date format on AspNet Core by global settings. This can be applicable for the older version as well. In a newer version by default, .Net depends upon Newtonsoft to process any JSON data. Newtonsoft depends upon Newtonsoft.Json.Converters.IsoDateTimeConverter class for processing date which in turns adds timezone for JSON data format. There is a global setting available for same that can be adjusted according to requirement. So, for example, we want to set default formatting to US format, we just need this code. services.AddMvc() .AddJsonOptions(options => { options.SerializerSettings.DateTimeZoneHandling = "MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss"; });

jQuery Datatable generic implementation on .Net/dotnet Core for any entity server filtering or sorting through EF/EF Core

jQuery Datatable is one of the popular freely available grid for the developers. It works really great on the client side but there is always need to write a lot of codes on the server side for filtering and sorting for each individual entities. In this article, we would address this by creating a generic implementation of server code which can work on any entity without writing any further piece of code for filtering and sorting. Just by calling a generic extension method it would resolve sorting and filtering. The key points to achieve it are as follows: - Model binding and provider to transform client side request to strongly typed item on the server. - Once we get strongly typed items to read values, we can apply a dynamic approach to generate queries and filters through LINQ expression. - At final part, just consumption of created mechanism by creating endpoints for each entity. Also, we can easily select required columns through LINQ projection. Model Binding As per Da...