consuming wcf service secured by adfs in windows phone application - wcf

Question

I have a wcf service secured by ADFS deployed in azure. I am able to consume that service in my console application. But when I am not sure how to consume that service in windows phone 7 application.
In my console application, I am retrieving a security token and passing that token to channelfactory object using CreateChannelWithIssuedToken method. But there is no such method in windows phone app to pass the token to wcf service. Can anyone guide me in this issue?
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

CreateChannelWithIssuedToken was an extension method added by the WIF assembly in .NET 3.5/4.0 (I believe .NET 4.5 has most of this stuff now built-in to the System.ServiceModel namespace). Since you won't have this on the phone, you're stuck with the regular WCF methods to create and use channels.
This is still the case when working on WinForms/WPF apps, though in that case you have the option of bringing in the WIF assembly. Still, it isn't required, and consuming an ADFS-secured service is perfectly doable with the regular WCF classes.
Windows Phone seems to support this stuff, though with some caveats. Looking at the implementation of the extension method, it doesn't seem like they are doing anything all that fancy really:
public static T CreateChannelWithIssuedToken<T>(this ChannelFactory<T> factory, SecurityToken issuedToken)
{
return ChannelFactoryOperations.CreateChannelWithParameters<T>(factory, new FederatedClientCredentialsParameters
{
IssuedSecurityToken = issuedToken
});
}
public static T CreateChannelWithParameters<T>(ChannelFactory<T> factory, FederatedClientCredentialsParameters parameters)
{
ChannelFactoryOperations.VerifyChannelFactory<T>(factory);
T t = factory.CreateChannel();
((IChannel)t).GetProperty<ChannelParameterCollection>().Add(parameters);
return t;
}
The verify method simply performs some diagnostics and throws exceptions (such as if the endpoint isn't set). ChannelParameterCollection is defined in System.ServiceModel.Channels and is supported in Silverlight/WP7. And FederatedClientCredentialsParameters is nothing special either:
public class FederatedClientCredentialsParameters
{
public SecurityToken ActAs ( get; set; )
public SecurityToken OnBehalfOf ( get; set; )
public SecurityToken IssuedSecurityToken ( get; set; )
}
It seems like you should be able to create a channel and use your token with it normally, even from WP7, though I'm afraid I don't have the exact steps to do so. Maybe someone else does or maybe this leads you in the right direction.
This article shows how to access a WIF-protected WCF service from Silverlight, which I imagine is nearly identical to how you'd do it on the phone.

Answer 2

There is a training kit (http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=8396) example ACSAndWindowsPhone7 that may help here (I've not looked at it in detail). I know that Wade Wegner has a number of blog posts on ACS and WP7, but not sure if he's tackled ADFS specifically versus OAuth type mechanisms.