SMS Authentication in ASP.NET5 Application

In today's blog post, I will be discussing how to set up SMS authentication in ASP.NET5 web application.

SMS Authentication in Web Application

To begin with, I first created a web application in Visual Studio 2015RC named "SmsAuth".
Then I navigated to www.twilio.com and created an account.
In my application, I added the Twilio Nuget package.

Then I navigated to SendSmsAsync method in MessageServices.cs and added the following lines of code:

public static Task SendSmsAsync(string number, string message)

{
var client = new TwilioRestClient

  ("TwilioAccountSid", "TwilioAuthToken");

var result = client.SendMessage

  ("FromTwilioPhoneNumber", number, message);

return Task.FromResult(0);

}

The TwilioAccountSid, TwilioAuthToken and FromTwilioPhoneNumber are all available from the twilio account I created above. For simplicity, I have added all this information here only. For secret information, I would rather use SecretManager as I discussed in a previous blog post.

Next, I went to Index.cshtml in Manage folder and uncommented the following code:

@(Model.PhoneNumber ?? "None") [

        @if (Model.PhoneNumber != null)

        {

             <a asp-controller="Manage" 
    asp-action="AddPhoneNumber">Change</a>

             @: &nbsp;|&nbsp;

             <a asp-controller="Manage" 
    asp-action="RemovePhoneNumber">Remove</a>

         }

         else

         {

             <a asp-controller="Manage" 
    asp-action="AddPhoneNumber">Add</a>

          }

   ]

This allows the user to add a phone number to user account. Next in the same file I also uncommented the following code:

@if (Model.TwoFactor)

 {

     <form asp-controller="Manage" 
    asp-action="DisableTwoFactorAuthentication"
        method="post" class="form-horizontal" role="form">

     <text>

     Enabled

     <input type="submit" value="Disable" 
    class="btn btn-link" />

     </text>

     </form>

     }

    else

     {

     <form asp-controller="Manage" asp-action=

    "EnableTwoFactorAuthentication" method="post"
 
    class="form-horizontal" role="form">


     <text>

     Disabled

     <input type="submit" value="Enable" 
    class="btn btn-link" />

     </text>

     </form>

}

This allows user to enable/ disable two factor authentication in the user account.

Next, I removed "dnxcore50" from frameworks in projects.json because twilio cannot target dnxcore50.

Now I ran the application and registered as a regular user with my email and password.
Then I clicked on my username and it navigated me to Manage Index page: http://localhost:31469/Manage
Next, I added my phone number to my account.
Then I received a verification code on my cell phone.
I entered that on the screen and it verified my phone number.

Then I enabled the two factor authentication.
Then I logged off and logged in again. I entered my username and password. Next, it asked me my method of second authentication and since Phone was the only option, I selected that.
Then I received an SMS with security code.

I entered that code in my application And was able to login.
So now everytime user tries to login, he has to put in his password as well as the security code. This makes the application more secure as it's two factor authentication.

Conclusion

So we saw it's easy to set up SMS authentication on our web application. This is useful if we want to make our application more secure or if for some reason we want to use only SMS authentication, we can set up like this.
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Facebook Authentication in ASP.NET5 Application

In today's blog post, I will be discussing how to set up Facebook authentication in ASP.NET 5 Web application.

Facebook Authentication in Web Application

To begin with, I created a new web application on Visual Studio 2015RC.
Then I navigated to developers.facebook.com and added a new app. Choose Website as the platform.

 I named the app as TestAuth and you can choose any category and click on Create App ID

 Now your App ID and and App Secret are created and you can view them.

In the Settings tab, I also added my project URL.

Then, in my TestAuth application, I went to Startup.cs file, Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IHostingEnvironment env, ILoggerFactory loggerfactory) method and uncommented the following code:

app.UseFacebookAuthentication();

This adds the Facebook Middleware by adding it to the HTTP Request pipeline.

Next, I added the AppId and AppSecret to my config.json file

  "Authentication": {

    "Facebook": {

      "AppId": "8xxxxxxxxxx",

      "AppSecret":  "2xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"

    }

  }

 Now when I run the application and navigate to Login page, I see Facebook login.

Clicking on Facebook button, redirects to the facebook login page. The customer can now use facebook credentials to login to our web application.

Conclusion

So we saw it's easy to set up Facebook authentication on our web application. This prevents the user from the hassle of creating new credentials on our site and for us as web developers, it prevents the hassle of managing the passwords. Similarly, we can use Twitter, Google, etc to set up authentication provider.
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