OpenID is sweeping the web. With announcements by Microsoft and Google recently to support the OpenID Framework, things have effectively gotten huge! One of the things I’ve been wondering about is WCF Security and how one could integrate with OpenID. Here’s what I’ve been able to dig up and implement so far.
First off, it is a good idea to review what OpenID is. Check it out at openid.net for a starting point. A good read is available at the what page for OpenID. However, if you want to get into the nitty gritty internal workings of OpenID, it is a little trickier. The developer page is a good place to start, but it is somewhat minimal. Once jumping out from that page the information gets more useful. Plaxo has an interesting recipe for OpenID and also OpenID for non-Super Users are great. Both get into the grit more.
But skipping past a ton of the existing specifications and documentation might be a better idea once I realized that there truly were some .NET libraries for Open ID.
- DotNet OpenId
- ExtremeSwank which is hosted at ExtremeSwank Google Code.
Out of these two examples ExtremeSwank definitely has the best documentation out. Easy to read code examples are even available. I started to just go with ExtremeSwank, but after looking up integration notes on OpenID support in BlogEngine.NET I decided to download both.
For my pending BlogEngine.NET Integration I found the following articles:
- jmpinline "How to add OpenID support to BlogEngine.NET"
- Chris Blankenship’s Ramblings "OpenID for BlogEngine.Net"
I’ll have the follow up to my discoveries soon, so stay tuned!
…and if you do want to read the specifications, feel free.
Disclosure: author of dotnetopenid
Stay tuned… if you use dotnetopenid, the next major release will offer easy integration with OAuth. OAuth gives you what you need to use OpenID (or other passwordless auth) for WCF and other services.