Friday, November 06, 2009

How to configure an AuthenticationDomainService using Ria Services Class Library

by Andrea Boschin via Silverlight & XAML Playground on 11/6/2009 11:36:01 AM

Using a Ria Services Class library to collect DomainServices and DomainContexts in a solution is a good practice because everyone know the value of having classes separated in projects instead of having them in the web project.

If you try to create this kind of project and then you add an Authentication Domain Service with the July 2009 CTP of Ria Services you will find two major drawbacks. First of all you will notice the generated code does not contains a RiaContext class. RiaContext is the class responsible to handle the User and roles and configure the type of Authentication to use in the application.

To workaround to this problem you may simply write by hand this class and put it in the client side part of the Ria Services library project. The code can be copied by an AuthenticationDomainContext generated in the web project but it is very simple and I show you the code here:

   1: public sealed partial class RiaContext : System.Windows.Ria.RiaContextBase

   2: {

   3:     #region Extensibility Method Definitions

   4:  

   5:     partial void OnCreated();

   6:  

   7:     #endregion

   8:  

   9:     public RiaContext()

  10:     {

  11:         this.OnCreated();

  12:     }

  13:  

  14:     public new static RiaContext Current

  15:     {

  16:         get

  17:         {

  18:             return ((RiaContext)(System.Windows.Ria.RiaContextBase.Current));

  19:         }

  20:     }

  21:  

  22:     public new User User

  23:     {

  24:         get

  25:         {

  26:             return ((User)(base.User));

  27:         }

  28:     }

  29: }

With this class you can configure the Authentication Domain Context as you did with the generated class. So you have to add it to the App.config, in the ApplicationLifetimeObjects tag and then add a kind of authentication like the WindowsAuthentication and FormsAuthentication.

The second drawback is that if you run the project this way and then you call the Login() method (or any other method) of the RiaContext you will get an error:

The DomainContextType is null or invalid and there are no contexts generated from AuthenticationBase<T>

This probably come from the fact that the RiaContext is not correctly initializated so when the class search for a valid domaincontext to handle the Login call it fails because it does not find it. The tip to correct this behavior is to specify the DomainContext property in the Authentication you have choosed. Here is how to change the App.xaml file:

   1: <Application.ApplicationLifetimeObjects>

   2:     <slpgria:RiaContext>

   3:         <slpgria:RiaContext.Authentication>

   4:             <appsvc:FormsAuthentication>

   5:                 <appsvc:FormsAuthentication.DomainContext>

   6:                     <slpgdc:MyAuthenticationDomainContext />

   7:                 </appsvc:FormsAuthentication.DomainContext>

   8:             </appsvc:FormsAuthentication>

   9:         </slpgria:RiaContext.Authentication>

  10:     </slpgria:RiaContext>

  11: </Application.ApplicationLifetimeObjects>

As you can see you have simply to give an instance of the generated Authentication Domain context class to the FormsAuthentication (or Windows Authentication as well). The RiaContext need to have this instance to make the calls to the BL methods in the Domain Service.

I really do not know if this behavior will be corrected in the next releases of RiaServices. The solution is pretty simple but take me some hours to understand what are going wrong. So I hope this may help you to spare some time making your experiments with the current release.