What makes the FederatedAuthentication.SessionAuthenticationModule return NULL?

Question

I'm not sure why but my FederatedAuthentication.SessionAuthenticationModule is resolving as NULL and crashing my app when I try to run my ClaimsTransformer() module:

    public void EstablishSession(ClaimsPrincipal principal)
    {
        var sessionToken = new SessionSecurityToken(principal, TimeSpan.FromHours(8))
        {
            IsPersistent = false, // make persistent
            IsReferenceMode = true // cache on server
        };


        FederatedAuthentication.SessionAuthenticationModule.WriteSessionTokenToCookie(sessionToken);
       // FederatedAuthentication.SessionAuthenticationModule == null and I throw an error :(
    }

Here's what's in my web.config:

<configSections>
  <section name="system.identityModel" type="System.IdentityModel.Configuration.SystemIdentityModelSection, System.IdentityModel, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089" />
  <section name="system.identityModel.services" type="System.IdentityModel.Services.Configuration.SystemIdentityModelServicesSection, System.IdentityModel.Services, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089" />
</configSections>
<system.web>
  <authentication mode="None" />
</system.web>
<system.webServer>
  <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true">
    <remove name="RoleManager" />
    <remove name="FormsAuthentication" />
    <remove name="SessionAuthenticationModule" />
    <add name="SessionAuthenticationModule" type="System.IdentityModel.Services.SessionAuthenticationModule, System.IdentityModel.Services, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" />
  </modules>
</system.webServer>
<system.identityModel>
  <identityConfiguration>
    <claimsAuthenticationManager type="Web.Infrastructure.Authentication.ClaimsTransformer, Web" />
  </identityConfiguration>
</system.identityModel>
<system.identityModel.services>
  <federationConfiguration>
    <cookieHandler requireSsl="false" />
  </federationConfiguration>
</system.identityModel.services>

This is driving me crazy as I have the code running in a (proof of concept) project without any problems, and appears is all I need to get this functionality working, but for some strange reason, when I try to implement in our real project, my FederatedAuthentication.SessionAuthenticationModule is always NULL.

What am I missing here? Any Ideas? Why is the SessionAuthenticationModule not initializing correctly?

Answer 1

I'm having almost same behavior with already-working project and FederatedAuthentication.WSFederationAuthenticationModule.

Problem solved my switching from IIS Express to full IIS (bad merge of for project file).

Also you can try to add this module not only to a section, but :

<system.web>
<httpModules>
<add name="SessionAuthenticationModule" type="System.IdentityModel.Services.SessionAuthenticationModule, System.IdentityModel.Services, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" />

You may refer to this MSDN article for a sample.

Answer 2

I've been having this problem and just solved it by adding the following to my web.config. Worth a try if anyone else is having the same problem.

  <system.webServer>
    <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true">
      <remove name="FormsAuthenticationModule" />
      <add name="SessionAuthenticationModule" type="System.IdentityModel.Services.SessionAuthenticationModule, System.IdentityModel.Services, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"></add>
    </modules>
  </system.webServer>