Step-by-Step Guide to Integrating OpenAuth into Your ASP.NET Web Application
No matter what kind of Web application you build, the process always seems to start in the same place: managing user accounts. Writing a file-sharing application for the Web? You begin by identifying who is uploading the file. Writing a chat application for the Web? You have to know who will use the chat session, so you can give them access. Because the Web is inherently multi-user, any application you build is going to require managing a list of users.
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For ASP.NET programmers, this means one of several approaches:
. Use ASP.NET authentication - You could use the built-in login controls in ASP.NET 2.0. But even with these very cool controls you will still need to write, test, debug, and maintain page code.
. Roll your own - You could build it yourself by creating a table of users, building the data accessors, encrypting the passwords, and all that back-end stuff. Then you have to create an interface for logging in, requesting passwords, sending e-mails, and so on. To do it right is a lot of work.
. Use an example - You could use an example set of code you find on the Web. But it’s still just a starting point. It might not have all of the features you need, like password recovery. And in any case, you will still need to maintain the code.
. Build from an application base - There are many out-of-the-box applications, like DotNetNuke, that you could build on. The good news is, they handle basic user management. The bad news is that they include a lot of functionality you might not need.
. Use an identity provider - The last option (and not coincidently the point of this article) is using an external identity provider. In this case, I’ll show you how using the AOL Open Authentication API (OpenAuth).
Using an external identity provider offers a lot of advantages, not just to you, the application developer, but also to your customers. You get to start building your application right away, confident that you will be able to identify users and log them in quickly and reliably. And your customers will be able to reuse their existing screen names and passwords. Of course, that depends on the popularity of the identity provider; in the case of AOL this means leveraging the millions of people who have already registered with AOL Instant Messaging (AIM), among many other services.
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Click here to download Step-by-Step Guide to Integrating OpenAuth into Your ASP.NET Web Application.
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