Authentication and authorization in minimal APIs

Article
10/25/2023

Minimal APIs support all the authentication and authorization options available in ASP.NET Core and provide some additional functionality to improve the experience working with authentication.

Key concepts in authentication and authorization

Authentication is the process of determining a user's identity. Authorization is the process of determining whether a user has access to a resource. Both authentication and authorization scenarios share similar implementation semantics in ASP.NET Core. Authentication is handled by the authentication service, IAuthenticationService, which is used by authentication middleware. Authorization is handled by the authorization service, IAuthorizationService, which is used by the authorization middleware.

The authentication service uses registered authentication handlers to complete authentication-related actions. For example, an authentication-related action is authenticating a user or signing out a user. Authentication schemes are names that are used to uniquely identify an authentication handler and its configuration options. Authentication handlers are responsible for implementing the strategies for authentication and generating a user's claims given a particular authentication strategy, such as OAuth or OIDC. The configuration options are unique to the strategy as well and provide the handler with configuration that affects authentication behavior, such as redirect URIs.

There are two strategies for determining user access to resources in the authorization layer:

Role-based strategies determine a user's access based on the role they are assigned, such as Administrator or User. For more information on role-based authorization, see role-based authorization documentation.
Claim-based strategies determine a user's access based on claims that are issued by a central authority. For more information on claim-based authorization, see claim-based authorization documentation.

In ASP.NET Core, both strategies are captured into an authorization requirement. The authorization service leverages authorization handlers to determine whether or not a particular user meets the authorization requirements applied onto a resource.

Enabling authentication in minimal apps

To enable authentication, call AddAuthentication to register the required authentication services on the app's service provider.

var builder = WebApplication.CreateBuilder(args);
builder.Services.AddAuthentication();
var app = builder.Build();

app.MapGet("/", () => "Hello World!");
app.Run();

Typically, a specific authentication strategy is used. In the following sample, the app is configured with support for JWT bearer-based authentication. This example makes use of the APIs available in the Microsoft.AspNetCore.Authentication.JwtBearer NuGet package.

var builder = WebApplication.CreateBuilder(args);
// Requires Microsoft.AspNetCore.Authentication.JwtBearer
builder.Services.AddAuthentication().AddJwtBearer();
var app = builder.Build();

app.MapGet("/", () => "Hello World!");
app.Run();

By default, the WebApplication automatically registers the authentication and authorization middlewares if certain authentication and authorization services are enabled. In the following sample, it's not necessary to invoke UseAuthentication or UseAuthorization to register the middlewares because WebApplication does this automatically after AddAuthentication or AddAuthorization are called.

var builder = WebApplication.CreateBuilder(args);
builder.Services.AddAuthentication().AddJwtBearer();
builder.Services.AddAuthorization();
var app = builder.Build();

app.MapGet("/", () => "Hello World!");
app.Run();

In some cases, such as controlling middleware order, it's necessary to explicitly register authentication and authorization. In the following sample, the authentication middleware runs after the CORS middleware has run. For more information on middlewares and this automatic behavior, see Middleware in Minimal API apps.

var builder = WebApplication.CreateBuilder(args);

builder.Services.AddCors();
builder.Services.AddAuthentication().AddJwtBearer();
builder.Services.AddAuthorization();

var app = builder.Build();

app.UseCors();
app.UseAuthentication();
app.UseAuthorization();

app.MapGet("/", () => "Hello World!");
app.Run();

Configuring authentication strategy

Authentication strategies typically support a variety of configurations that are loaded via options. Minimal apps support loading options from configuration for the following authentication strategies:

The ASP.NET Core framework expects to find these options under the Authentication:Schemes:{SchemeName} section in configuration. In the following sample, two different schemes, Bearer and LocalAuthIssuer, are defined with their respective options. The Authentication:DefaultScheme option can be used to configure the default authentication strategy that's used.

{
  "Authentication": {
    "DefaultScheme":  "LocalAuthIssuer",
    "Schemes": {
      "Bearer": {
        "ValidAudiences": [
          "https://localhost:7259",
          "http://localhost:5259"
        ],
        "ValidIssuer": "dotnet-user-jwts"
      },
      "LocalAuthIssuer": {
        "ValidAudiences": [
          "https://localhost:7259",
          "http://localhost:5259"
        ],
        "ValidIssuer": "local-auth"
      }
    }
  }
}

In Program.cs, two JWT bearer-based authentication strategies are registered, with the:

"Bearer" scheme name.
"LocalAuthIssuer" scheme name.

"Bearer" is the typical default scheme in JWT-bearer based enabled apps, but the default scheme can be overridden by setting the DefaultScheme property as in the preceding example.

The scheme name is used to uniquely identify an authentication strategy and is used as the lookup key when resolving authentication options from config, as shown in the following example:

var builder = WebApplication.CreateBuilder(args);

builder.Services.AddAuthentication()
  .AddJwtBearer()
  .AddJwtBearer("LocalAuthIssuer");
  
var app = builder.Build();

app.MapGet("/", () => "Hello World!");
app.Run();

Configuring authorization policies in minimal apps

Authentication is used to identify and validate the identity of users against an API. Authorization is used to validate and verify access to resources in an API and is facilitated by the IAuthorizationService registered by the AddAuthorization extension method. In the following scenario, a /hello resource is added that requires a user to present an admin role claim with a greetings_api scope claim.

Configuring authorization requirements on a resource is a two-step process that requires:

Configuring the authorization requirements in a policy globally.
Applying individual policies to resources.

In the following code, AddAuthorizationBuilder is invoked which:

Adds authorization-related services to the DI container.
Returns an AuthorizationBuilder that can be used to directly register authorization policies.

The code creates a new authorization policy, named admin_greetings, that encapsulates two authorization requirements:

A role-based requirement via RequireRole for users with an admin role.
A claim-based requirement via RequireClaim that the user must provide a greetings_api scope claim.

The admin_greetings policy is provided as a required policy to the /hello endpoint.

using Microsoft.Identity.Web;

var builder = WebApplication.CreateBuilder(args);

builder.Services.AddAuthorizationBuilder()
  .AddPolicy("admin_greetings", policy =>
        policy
            .RequireRole("admin")
            .RequireClaim("scope", "greetings_api"));

var app = builder.Build();

app.MapGet("/hello", () => "Hello world!")
  .RequireAuthorization("admin_greetings");

app.Run();

Use `dotnet user-jwts` for development testing

Throughout this article, an app configured with JWT-bearer based authentication is used. JWT bearer-based authentication requires that clients present a token in the request header to validate their identity and claims. Typically, these tokens are issued by a central authority, such as an identity server.

When developing on the local machine, the dotnet user-jwts tool can be used to create bearer tokens.

dotnet user-jwts create

Note

When invoked on a project, the tool automatically adds the authentication options matching the generated token to appsettings.json.

Tokens can be configured with a variety of customizations. For example, to create a token for the admin role and greetings_api scope expected by the authorization policy in the preceding code:

dotnet user-jwts create --scope "greetings_api" --role "admin"

The generated token can then be sent as part of the header in the testing tool of choice. For example, with curl:

curl -i -H "Authorization: Bearer {token}" https://localhost:{port}/hello

For more information on the dotnet user-jwts tool, read the complete documentation.

Authentication and authorization in minimal APIs

Key concepts in authentication and authorization

Enabling authentication in minimal apps

Configuring authentication strategy

Configuring authorization policies in minimal apps

Use `dotnet user-jwts` for development testing

Feedback

Additional resources

Authentication and authorization in minimal APIs

Key concepts in authentication and authorization

Enabling authentication in minimal apps

Configuring authentication strategy

Configuring authorization policies in minimal apps

Use dotnet user-jwts for development testing

Feedback

Additional resources

Use `dotnet user-jwts` for development testing