Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update: Part 3: Authentication

re: Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update: Part 3: Authentication

Ashraf Nadi — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:35:14 GMT

Hi brad

I want to know how can i display Arabic Words in this example from right to left order , i tried to do this but the order of Arabic alphabit if from left to right.

thanks for these greate posts.

re: Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update: Part 3: Authentication

Michael — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 07:49:54 GMT

Probably it is possible to improve generated MyApp.Web.g.cs as now it throws exception in addition to attribute based validation rules for "password".

re: Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update: Part 3: Authentication

Tommy Carlier — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 11:34:42 GMT

Hi Brad,

I just wanted to warn you that your screenshot thumbnails link to file://C:/Users/brada/AppData/...

re: Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update: Part 3: Authentication

Miguel Madero — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:12:14 GMT

Brad,

This looks great. Looks like RIA Services is going in the right direction. I'm glad to see that it considers other aspects like security.

I've seen the need to restrict access not only at a method level but also to some of the DataMembers (eg. you will have the same GetProduct method, but I want to send the cost only to Managers).

re: Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update: Part 3: Authentication

Marc Ziss — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:44:13 GMT

Brad,

Excellent Job on everything you guys pushed out in this; I think SL3+RIA represents a giant leap in app develpoment.

One question about authentication:

I tried using the [RequiresAuthentication] decorator for the update and delete methods and found that although it did not execute the RIA CRUD; the fact that these options were not available to the user was not reflected in the UI. Is it possible to make the appropriate buttons in the dataform "pay attention" to what actions can be performed by the current user?

Thanks to your whole team for making development fun again.

re: Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update: Part 3: Authentication

BradA — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 05:47:14 GMT

>> Probably it is possible to improve generated MyApp.Web.g.cs as now it throws exception in addition to attribute based validation rules for "password".

Michael - we have been around this a few times, there is not an easy asnwer.. But do check out David's blog post on this: http://blog.davidyack.com/journal/2009/5/18/suppressing-validationexception-during-debugging.html

re: Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update: Part 3: Authentication

Miguel Madero — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:55:42 GMT

Brad,

I think that Exceptions for Validation errors is wrong. The exceptions should be raised for abnormal flows of the program, which setting an invalid password really isn't. The fact that we have an object with a property with an invalid value is different than having this exception. The worst part is that this property aren't going to be used only by the views, but also through the ViewModels, other models or directly in CodeBehind (hopefully no), forcing us to write a bunch of unecessary try/catch blocks.

re: Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update: Part 3: Authentication

dsoltesz — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:25:48 GMT

When usings ria services July and windows authentication, how do you get the

RiaContext.Current.User.Roles populated from the domain/ldap

re: Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update: Part 3: Authentication

dsoltesz — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:41:45 GMT

Figured out what I was missing...need to make sure I specified the provider in my web.config

defaultProvider="AspNetWindowsTokenRoleProvider"/>

Full settings should be set under <system.web>

re: Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update: Part 3: Authentication

BradA — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 07:24:13 GMT

Miguel Madero - I hear your pain on exception.. In fact I wrote a book that covered the subject and I completely agree with you!

http://www.amazon.com/Framework-Design-Guidelines-Conventions-Development/dp/0321246756

All I can say is there were some implementation constraints that lead us down this path in Silverlight 3 and we are looking hard at this area in Silverlight 4

re: Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update: Part 3: Authentication

Edward Johnson — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 18:17:41 GMT

Trying to use RIAServices Library. Have to remove ria link from the Silverlight project.

Now riacontext is undefined. What do I need to do?

re: Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update: Part 3: Authentication

BradA — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 18:27:09 GMT

Edward -- yes, the RIA Link is required for codegen.. why did you have to remove it?

re: Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update: Part 3: Authentication

Edward Johnson — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:12:42 GMT

Reading (scanning really so that's probably the problem) the July 2009 docs on RIA. Probably confused.

On page 133 -- it says the 'Enable RIA Services' option in the Silverlight library project has been enabled to creat a RIA Link with the mid-tier class library. --- Mine still has link to the .Web and there is not one available for the service library.

So on page 143 it says 'The astute reader may have noticed .... the RIA Link was missing between Silverlight apps and Web App'

On page 145 it says '... if your application involves multiple domain services or ..... consider using .NET RIA class libraries and remove the RIA LInk between the client and Web application projects'

re: Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update: Part 3: Authentication

Edward Johnson — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:48:53 GMT

OK tried it again from scratch.

Seems to have worked. What I did different I can't say other than maybe I hadn't added a domain service to the service.web library.

Thanks anyway...I guess RTFM applies here.

re: Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update: Part 3: Authentication

Richie Scott — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:53:16 GMT

Brad,

Like Edward I would prefer to use the RIA .Net Set Class Libraries rather than having a link to the Web Application. I to do not get a RIAContext generated. Any chance you could update your example to show how authentication would work when using Class Libraries instead of having a RIA link to the Server Weba application?

re: Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update: Part 3: Authentication

BradA — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 09:00:00 GMT

Richie -- yes.. i am working on a class library example..

re: Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update: Part 3: Authentication

richiescott — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 00:34:31 GMT

In terms of modularity (Prism v2) I believe being able to support Authentication as part of a Service Class Library a must.

The problems I had were with regards the ContextType of the RiaContext not being set and as such was getting an Object Reference Not Set error.

Thanks Brad I really appreciate it.

re: Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update: Part 3: Authentication

Miguel Madero — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 03:54:47 GMT

Brad,

To separate exceptions from validation errors, we are using and Attached Behaviour that will take the Binding object, and then check if the Source object has any validation errors registered for the Source property of the binding and based on that go to the appropriate state.

In our case we have a dictionary of properties with a list of validation errors. That's the list we'll check to see if there's any problem with the bindings.

The other benefit, appart from not having to deal with Exceptiosn in the ViewModel or other code is that we can defer some of the validations, to run in the background, when we click save or even get errors from Server Side validations, we could send the object, get it back, update the DataContext and read the a list of validation errors generated in the server.

Of course this is just the strategy an this option can vary from app to app, but the AttachedBehaviour gives us the option to plug-in any strategy.

re: Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update: Part 3: Authentication

Peter Kellner — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 02:13:38 GMT

Wow, a lot of words!!! I'm wondering if there is a story around GetSuperEmployee(WithParameters)

I always find the WithParameters is where it gets hard. I currently use a query class that seems to get bigger and bigger, but then at least I don't have 300 indivudual methods with different combinations of parameters I can never seem to remember.

Thanks for writing all this

re: Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update: Part 3: Authentication

Graham Stevenson — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 19:18:31 GMT

Hi,

Is there a way to catch the exception thrown by 'RequiresAuthentication' at the client end. Seems to me like we should just catch this and pop up a login box ??.

Thanks

Graham

re: Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update: Part 3: Authentication

Jim Evans — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 13:05:17 GMT

Hi -

I don't like the idea of an exception or showing a blank screen if authentication fails. Wouldn't the best way to implement a scenario like this in a LOB application be to not show the menu option to get to the data until the user is authenticated?

Just my 2 cents.

Jim

re: Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update: Part 3: Authentication

Henri — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 10:22:48 GMT

I agree with Jim Evans. When no data is shown, it is unclear if it's a bug or a 'not authenticated' state.

I would prefer to hide the menu item

Henri

re: Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update: Part 3: Authentication

MarkShortt — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 20:13:50 GMT

Brad, is there any way of refreshing the displayed page after the user logs in? e.g. to show unlogged in text and then different logged in text?

Great tutorial series by the way

re: Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update: Part 3: Authentication

MarkShortt — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 20:41:12 GMT

Figured it out. Hooked into the AuthenticationService events for logged in and out. Copied them from the code behind for LoginControl.xaml

re: Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update: Part 3: Authentication

Mylo — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 03:36:22 GMT

Hi!

I would add some custom properties to UserBase class; it works with "simple" types (string,int,DateTime,...), but it doesn't work with custom types.

"Code-generator" doesn't create properties at client-side.