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Using the WHR Parameter with SharePoint 2010 and SAML Auth

  • Article

I've seen lots of questions and confusion (and was a little lost myself for a bit) on the fixes in SharePoint 2010 SP1 + June CU to enable use of the WHR parameter.  This does in fact work now but requires a couple of things:

  1. Configure the SPTrustedIdentityTokenIssuer

The SPTrustedIdentityTokenIssuer has a property called UseWHomeRealmParameter now; that must be set to true in order for SharePoint to pass the WHR parameter along to the IdP.  Here's a short powershell snippet that I used to do this:

$ap = get-sptrustedidentitytokenissuer -identity "ADFS with Roles"
$ap.UseWHomeRealmParameter = $true
$ap.Update()

Pretty simple - now SharePoint will send along any WHR parameter that it finds.

  1. Write or do "something" to append the WHR parameter

In my case I wrote an HttpModule to append the WHR parameter.  Specifically here is how I did it:

  • In the Init override I added a handler for the BeginRequest event
  • In the code for the BeginRequest event I look to see if:
  • The request is headed to _trust/default.aspx AND
  • The request does NOT have a WHR parameter included yet
  • If the request meets the two criteria described above, I create a redirect back to the _trust/default.aspx.  When I do that I:
  • Add every query string parameter that was there before
  • Append my WHR parameter to the end
  • Response.Redirect back to _trust/default.aspx

That was it.  I tested this using an InPrivate browser session in IE because it won't use the authentication cookies that could otherwise throw off the test results.  So far all tests have worked just as hoped - I've also verified in Fiddler that the WHR parameter is now flowing over to ADFS (in my case) as desired.  I've attached the source code for my simple litte project to this posting to help get you started.

AdfsHrd.zip

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    thanks
  • Anonymous
    September 15, 2011
    If you have F5 load balancers, here is a great iRule that intercepts the 302 Redirect from SharePoint to the IDP (ADFS) and simply tacks on the whr paramater to it. Works like a champ and I did not need an HTTP Module to do this. Hope this helps someone out there. Comments that explain how the iRule is working begin with ###

when HTTP_RESPONSE {  if { [HTTP::is_redirect] }{    ### Check to see if the 302 redirect HTTP Header of "Location" is going to the URI of the Identity Provider    if { [HTTP::header value Location] starts_with "adfsserver.company.com/.../ls"}{  ### Setup a $location variable to contain the current string in the HTTP Location Header      set location [HTTP::header value Location]  ### Setup a $realm variable to pull the realm paramater value out of the Locatoin header ($location) as you may have multiple SharePoint WebApps or Realms in your env and each realm may need a different &whr paramater      set realm [findstr $location wtrealm= 8 &]      ### only continue if you have a value in the $realm paramater      if { [info exists realm] }{    ### Look into the value of the $realm paramater and IF it matches 1 or more strings, then set the $location variable and append the &whr paramater of the desired IDP.        switch -glob $realm {          urn%3asharepoint%3asite1 -          urn%3asharepoint%3asite2 {    ### This is a 3rd party IDP that ADFS has been setup with as a Trusted Identity Provider            set location "${location}&whr=https://yourIDPIdentifyer/fed/idp"            HTTP::header replace Location $location          }          urn%3asharepoint%3asite3 -          urn%3asharepoint%3asite1 - {    ### this is the Active Directory IDP URI that ADFS would use            set location "${location}&whr=adfsserver.company.com/.../trust"            HTTP::header replace Location $location          }        }      }    }  } }

  • Anonymous
    September 16, 2011
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    March 11, 2014
    Hi Steve,

    This does not work if WAP is configured for the SharePoint url. In that case WAP redirects the url directly to ADFS. Any idea on how to Achieve this with WAP in place ?
  • Anonymous
    September 18, 2014
    The comment has been removed