How to login a user with a JWT in asp.net core - asp.net-core

Question

I have an IdentityServer4 instance.
This IdentityServer4 instance is called by a separate asp.net core web app (from an http post login action) to receive a JWT.
What do I do with this JWT to "login" the a user?

Answer 1

Your client application that wants to authenticate should communicate with the Identity Server application on the Open ID Connect (OIDC) protocol. Asp.net core supports this out of the box with AddAuthentication().AddOpenIdConnect() extension that you can use on the IServiceCollection in your Startup.cs file.
In the Configure method, the call to UseAuthetication is what actually "login" the user (it will add the user claims to the incoming requests). So if you are using for example MVC, make sure to add that line before the call to UseMvc().
The Identity Server documentation even provides a sample of this here: http://docs.identityserver.io/en/latest/quickstarts/3_interactive_login.html#creating-an-mvc-client
A very simple example would look something like this:
public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
// other configuration...
services.AddAuthentication(options =>
{
options.DefaultScheme = CookieAuthenticationDefaults.AuthenticationScheme;
options.DefaultChallengeScheme = OpenIdConnectDefaults.AuthenticationScheme;
})
.AddCookie()
.AddOpenIdConnect(options =>
{
options.Authority = Configuration["auth:oidc:authority"];
options.ClientId = Configuration["auth:oidc:clientid"];
});
// other configuration...
}
public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, ILoggerFactory loggerFactory)
{
// other configuration...
app.UseAuthentication();
// other configuration...
}