Cookie Middleware without Identity ASP.NET Core v2

Question

I am trying to authenticate without using identity. I have found a few articles describing how to do it in other versions however nothing for ASP.NET Core 2.

Below is what I have cobbled together. But when it gets to SignInAsync an exception is thrown InvalidOperationException: No authentication handler is configured to handle the scheme: MyCookieMiddlewareInstance

    // This method gets called by the runtime. Use this method to add services to the container.
    public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
    {
        services.AddMvc();
        services.AddCookieAuthentication("MyCookieMiddlewareInstance", o =>
        {
            o.LoginPath = new PathString("/Account/Login/");
            o.AccessDeniedPath = new PathString("/Account/Forbidden/");

        });
        services.AddAuthentication();
    }

    // This method gets called by the runtime. Use this method to configure the HTTP request pipeline.
    public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IHostingEnvironment env)
    {
        if (env.IsDevelopment())
        {
            app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage();
        }
        else
        {
            app.UseExceptionHandler("/Home/Error");
        }

        app.UseStaticFiles();

        app.UseMvc(routes =>
        {
            routes.MapRoute(
                name: "default",
                template: "{controller=Home}/{action=Index}/{id?}");
        });

        app.UseAuthentication();
    }

    public async Task<IActionResult> Login()
    {

        var claims = new List<Claim>
            {
                new Claim(ClaimTypes.Name, "joe nobody")
            };
        var identity = new ClaimsIdentity(claims, "MyCookieMiddlewareInstance");
        var principal = new ClaimsPrincipal(identity);

        //blows up on the following statement:
        //InvalidOperationException: No authentication handler is configured to handle the scheme: MyCookieMiddlewareInstance
        await HttpContext.Authentication.SignInAsync("MyCookieMiddlewareInstance", principal); 

        return View();
    }

There is a Microsoft document for asp.net core v1.x (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/security/authentication/cookie) however the IApplicationBuilder.UseCookieAuthentication() is depreciated in v2 and haven't found any solution.

Answer 1

It looks like there are a few breaking changes with Auth 2.0 (https://github.com/aspnet/Announcements/issues/232)

The setup was correct however I needed to do two things:

1. Use HttpContext.SignInAsync() (using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Authentication) instead of HttpContext.Authentication.SignInAsync()
2. Use "AuthenticationTypes.Federation" as the authentication type (Note: other values don't seem to work and blank will result in the user name being set and IsAuthenticated to false) var identity = new ClaimsIdentity(claims, "AuthenticationTypes.Federation");

Below is the corrected code

In Startup.cs

    // This method gets called by the runtime. Use this method to add services to the container.
    public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
    {
        services.AddMvc();
        services.AddCookieAuthentication("MyCookieMiddlewareInstance", o =>
        {
            o.LoginPath = new PathString("/Account/Login/");
            o.AccessDeniedPath = new PathString("/Account/Forbidden/");
        });
        services.AddAuthentication();
    }

    // This method gets called by the runtime. Use this method to configure the HTTP request pipeline.
    public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IHostingEnvironment env)
    {
        if (env.IsDevelopment())
        {
            app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage();
        }
        else
        {
            app.UseExceptionHandler("/Home/Error");
        }

        app.UseStaticFiles();

        app.UseAuthentication();

        app.UseMvc(routes =>
        {
            routes.MapRoute(
                name: "default",
                template: "{controller=Home}/{action=Index}/{id?}");
        });
    }

In Controller

    using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Authentication;
    //...
    public async Task<IActionResult> Login()
    {
        var claims = new List<Claim>
        {
            new Claim(ClaimTypes.Name, "joe nobody")
        };
        var identity = new ClaimsIdentity(claims, "AuthenticationTypes.Federation");
        var principal = new ClaimsPrincipal(identity);
        await HttpContext.SignInAsync("MyCookieMiddlewareInstance", principal);

        return View();
    }