What is ASP.NET Identity?
ASP.NET Identity is a membership system for ASP.NET applications that allows users to be authenticated and authorized. When developing modern web, phone, or tablet applications, ASP.NET Identity brings a fresh look at how a membership system should be. For instance, you can customize the details about the logged-in user with ASP.NET Identity's customized login/logout functionality and customized profile features.
Today, web applications have a far greater range of data storage alternatives (which is rapidly expanding). Developers want to make use of social identity providers for authentication and authorization.
So what exactly do the phrases "authentication" and "authorization" imply?
Authentication- The server uses authentication to determine who is accessing their data or website. Authentication is the process of a user or customer proving their identity on a web server by logging in with email and password.
Authorization- After successful authentication, the server evaluates if the client has authority to use a resource or access a file. This is authorization.
With this basic introduction, let us now understand everything about ASP.NET Identity.
Table of contents
- What is ASP.NET identity?
- Features of ASP.NET Identity 2.0
- 6 important pieces of the ASP.NET Identity system
- Conclusion
What is ASP.NET identity?
Microsoft's user management library for ASP.NET is called ASP.NET Identity. It contains features including password hashing, password validation, user storage, and claim management. It normally includes a few basic authentication features such as cookies and multi-factor authentication. It can even introduce its own user interface in some cases.
All frameworks, including ASP.NET MVC, Web Forms, and Web Pages, can use the ASP.NET Identity. User information is stored in a database by default in ASP.NET Identity. It is also feasible to store data on a variety of storage providers depending on the application's needs. SharePoint, Azure table services, and other data sources are examples of data providers.
In ASP.NET Identity, role-based authorization is also very significant. Now we can easily define roles like "Administrator," "Customer," and so on, which allow us to assign users to these roles and restrict their access to some areas of the program.
The ASP.NET Identifier is a game-changer since it introduces Two-Factor Authentication to your web application. Let us understand more about two-factor authentication and other features in the next section.
Features of ASP.NET Identity 2.0
Following are the features of ASP.NET Identity 2.0:
Two-Factor Authentication: This adds another layer of protection to your web application. Previously, we only used single-factor authentication by entering a login and password into the online application. This made our account unsafe because hackers could hack your password and steal your personal information.
On the other hand, your username, password, and a One Time Password are required for two-factor authentication (OTP). A hardware token, your cell phone, or a PIN can be used as the One-Time Password.
When a user enters into their account, they must first enter their username and password, followed by a one-time password for the second step of the login procedure. The token’s produced password will be unique each time it is used and will change for a brief period of time. When compared to single-factor authentication, two-factor authentication makes our website far more secure. ASP.NET Identity may be used to secure both Web Apps and Web APIs.
Account Lockout: If a user wrongly inputs the password or the two-factor codes after a certain number of erroneous attempts. his or her account will be locked for a certain length of time. This feature can also be disabled by the developers.
Account Confirmation: With ASP.NET Identity, we can verify an account by confirming the user's email address. Most websites utilize this feature by asking users to confirm their email addresses before gaining access to their accounts and services. It also prevents the creation of fraudulent accounts.
Password Reset: If a user forgets their word, they can utilize this tool to reset it.
Support for IQueryable on Users and Roles: This makes it simple to get a list of Users and Roles.
Delete User Account: In previous versions of ASP.NET Identity (1.0), you couldn't delete a user using UserManager, however in ASP.NET 2.0, you can easily delete a user using UserManager.
Enhanced Password Validator: In previous versions of ASP.NET Identifier, the password validator just checked the minimum length of the password, but now it checks the difficulty of the password as well.
6 important pieces of the ASP.NET Identity system
The ASP.NET Identity system is made up of the following six components:
User: A user of the system is represented by a user object, which holds the person's basic authentication information, such as a user ID and password. IdentityUser is a class that captures basic authentication. The IdentityUser class can be inherited from a custom class for capturing profile information.
Role: The IdentityRole class provides this basic role, which is represented by a Role object. Create a custom class that inherits from the IdentityRole class to give the role a more detailed description.
User Manager: A User Manager is a class that lets you manage user accounts. The User Manager class may be used to do a variety of activities, including creating or removing a user account, modifying passwords, or adding and removing users from a role. It is included with ASP.NET Identity.
Role Manager: A Role Manager is a type of class that lets us manage roles. The role manager is in charge of adding, removing, and confirming whether a role already exists in the system. A role manager, such as the RoleManager class, can be used to accomplish this.
Authentication Manager: All of the preceding classes deal with users and roles, but they don't handle any authentication on their own. The Authentication Manager is in charge of signing people in and out. The local user account uses cookie-based authentication, similar to Forms Authentication. The IAuthenticationManager interface represents the authentication manager.
Entity Framework DBContext: In ASP.NET Identity, the database table schema is not as tightly established as it is in the ASP.NET membership system. The table schema is generated using the Entity Framework Code first technique, which implies that a distinct column is created in the database for each piece of the user profile. All of the above tables are created by default in a different database in the App Data folder, but we can choose our own database to store this information by specifying the database. Create a new DbContext class that derives from the IdentityDbContext base class to do this.
Final Words
ASP.NET Identity is designed to replace ASP.NET's conventional membership system with a far more secure and reliable authentication method. So use it in your application and enjoy enhanced security.