Claims based Authentication in SharePoint

SharePoint 2013 has 2 authentication mechanisms:

• ·         Windows classis mode Authentication
• ·         Claims based Authentication
• ·         SAML token based authentication

Windows authentication validates the user thorough windows credentials. It uses the windows user account to validate the user to SharePoint resources.

Here I will describe the Claims based authentication with membership provider

• This authentication mechanism authenticates credentials through a membership provider. The authentication providers can be:
• ·         LDAP
• ·         AD DS
• ·         SQL  Databases

1.       Configure FBA in SharePoint

2.       Open the Central Admin and click on Application ManagementàManage Web Applications

3.       Select the “New Web Application” tab from the ribbon

4.       Under Claims authentication type

       àCheck “Enable form based authentication”

5.       Give the provider name and role manager name.(This will be used in config files and also authenticating with SQL DB

6.       Open the 3 web.config files from IIS:

(Central Admin,Web Application,Security Token service Appication)

Locate the web.config file

Add the Membership Provider and role manager

Replace the section with the name provides while configuring the application

The membership provider includes the names that we will be using to connect to SQL DB.

Same configuration needs to be done to other 2 files mentioned above.

The next step will be authenticating the user through code.

1.       The aspnet membership provider creates the default tables and stored procedures which can be used to validate the user.

2.       A user enters the credentials in the site .The following code will be required to authenticate user.

SPClaimsUtility.AuthenticateFormsUser(Context.Request.UrlReferrer, userName, this.txtPassword.Text)

3.       In the next step we authorize user with the user claims as below:

string userRole = Project1.GetUserRole(claimsIdentity);

       string personId = Project1.GetPersonId(claimsIdentity);

       string email = Project1.GetUserEmail(claimsIdentity);

       string displayName = Project1.GetDisplayName(claimsIdentity, ants.USLocaleInUrl);

       string arabicDisplayName Project1.GetDisplayName(claimsIdentity, Constants.UAELocaleInUrl);

          string mobileNumber = Project1.GetMobileNumber(claimsIdentity);

if (claimsIdentity != null)

                {

                    Claim mobileClaim = claimsIdentity.Claims.SingleOrDefault(obj => obj.ClaimType == Constants.MobilePhoneClaimType);

                    if (mobileClaim != null)

                    {

                        return mobileClaim.Value;

                    }

4.       If the user authentication fails,we validate from SQL DB using aspnet membership provider.

The method used is (provider.ValidateUser) which validates whether a user with specified credentials are present in DB and returns value as true or false.