Identity Core with Entity Framework 6

Question

We want to develop a new ASP.NET Web-Application and if its somehow possible we want to take ASP.NET Core. One of the reasons for this wish is, that we fell in love with ASP.NET Core Identity.. But one problem is, that Identity depends on Entity Framework and Entity Framework Core still has some unimplemented features that we´ll need (https://github.com/aspnet/EntityFramework/wiki/Roadmap).

I´ve found an article in which the author provides possibilities to use Entity Framework 6 with ASP.NET Core (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/data/entity-framework-6). The recommended way of using EF 6 and ASP.NET Core is, creating a new dll targeting .NET Framework 4.6.something and put all the EF-stuff in it. Since this approach is our plan for data-handling in general, the Identity-Data need to be accessed too in some way. And there are many specialized EF-functions for Identity (e.g. AspNetCore.Identiy.EntityFrameworkCore), making authorization/authentication stuff better, easier, faster, handier - what ever.

But using different Frameworks (or even worse different versions of one Framework) for accessing the same database, or accessing the same data twice at two different places with different technologies is not the kind of wiping the slate clean, that we thought of.

May be I am completely stumped and this is pretty clear but I don´t really have a clean way or acceptable approach for this problem right now.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

I would look at Brock Allen's IdentityServer4 if I were you. Here https://github.com/IdentityServer/IdentityServer4 and here http://docs.identityserver.io/en/release/ for documentation.

You will even find some blogs on the msdn site recommending it. https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/webdev/2016/09/19/introducing-identityserver4-for-authentication-and-access-control-in-asp-net-core/

I think you will find its a much more complete solution.

To quote from the MSDN blog;

IdentityServer4 allows building the following features into your applications:

Authentication as a Service Centralized login logic and workflow for all of your applications (web, native, mobile, services and SPAs).

Single Sign-on / Sign-out Single sign-on (and out) over multiple application types.

Access Control for APIs Issue access tokens for APIs for various types of clients, e.g. server to server, web applications, SPAs and native/mobile apps.

Federation Gateway Support for external identity providers like Azure Active Directory, Google, Facebook etc. This shields your applications from the details of how to connect to these external providers.

Focus on Customization The most important part – many aspects of IdentityServer can be customized to fit your needs. Since IdentityServer is a framework and not a boxed product or a SaaS, you can write code to adapt the system the way it makes sense for your scenarios.