In this chapter, I will cover how to set up authentication on our ASP.NET Core MVC application. Our users will be stored in our SQL Server database, and Entity Framework Core 5 will be used to access it.
Install Identity NuGet Packages
The first thing we need to get out of the way is to install the needed NuGet packages for Entity Framework Core 5 Identity and AspNetCore.Identity.UI. Right-click the web project and click Manage NuGet Packages. Then install the Microsoft.AspNetCore.Identity.UI package as seen in Figure 15-1.
Figure 15-1
Install the ASP.NET Core Identity UI Package
The next step is to install the Microsoft.AspNetCore.Identity.EntityFrameworkCore NuGet package as seen in Figure 15-2.
Figure 15-2
Install the Entity Framework Core 5 Identity Package
Initialize Identity on App Startup
The next step is to update the Startup class to wire up ASP.NET Core Identity management using EF Core 5. To get started, we are going to update the ConfigureServices method. First, we add a using statement for ASP.NET Core Identity:
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Identity;
Next, we add an IEmailSender implementation that is needed by the scaffolded Login view we will be generating later:
public class EmailSender : IEmailSender
{
public Task SendEmailAsync(string email, string subject, string message)
{
return Task.CompletedTask;
}
}
Then we wire up ASP.NET Core Identity to use Entity Framework Core 5 in the ConfigureServices method:
Updated StartUp Class with Identity Management Added
Next, we need to update our AppDbContext class to inherit from IdentityDbContext so that it can be scaffolded in the next section. We do this so to tell Entity Framework Core 5 to manage our users, roles, and claims in our SQL Server database. To do this, we first need to install the Microsoft.AspNetCore.Identity.EntityFrameworkCore NuGet package to our DAL project. To do this, click Manage NuGet Packages on the main solution node. Then go to Installed and select the Microsoft.AspNetCore.Identity.EntityFrameworkCore package and click the DAL project checkbox as seen in Figure 15-3.
Figure 15-3
Install the Identity EF Core 5 Package into the DAL Project
Click the Install button to finish the installation. Now we can update our AppDbContext class to inherit from IdentityDbContext. To do this, add the following namespace first:
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Identity.EntityFrameworkCore;
Then update the AppDbContext class declaration to match:
public class AppDbContext : IdentityDbContext
Scaffold UI
Now we are going to use Visual Studio to scaffold our Identity UI. We are doing this so we get pre-built authentication UI pages like login and user registration. To do this, right-click the web project and select “Add New Scaffolded Item”. Then select Identity as seen in Figure 15-4.
Figure 15-4
Add an Identity Scaffolded Item
Then click the “Add” button. Next, select our AppDbContext class in the Data context class section and click the Override all files checkbox as seen in Figure 15-5.
Figure 15-5
Select AppDbContext for Identity UI Scaffold
Then click the Add button.
Update Database
Now we need to create and run a migration to add the Identity tables. First, create a new migration named “InitialIdentity” by running “Add-Migration InitialIdentity” in the Package Manager Console. Now run the migration by running “Update-Database” from the Package Manager Console. You can now see there are a bunch of added AspNet tables into our database as seen in Figure 15-6.
Figure 15-6
Added AspNet Identity Tables
Updating UI
Now it is time to update the UI to call into the scaffolded register and login functionality. We are going to simply render the LoginPartial Razor in the top nav bar by adding the following markup to the Layout Razor view:
<partial name="_LoginPartial" />
Open Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml and make it match Listing 15-2.
Updated _Layout Partial with Login Partial Render Added
You should now be able to see the Register and Login links on your web app as seen in Figure 15-7.
Figure 15-7
App with Register and Login Functionality
You can now access the Register page as seen in Figure 15-8.
Figure 15-8
Register User Page
You should now also be able to access the Login page as seen in Figure 15-9.
Figure 15-9
Login Page
You should now be able to register a user and log in with that user after you will see a greeting on the home page and a Logout link as seen in Figure 15-10.
Figure 15-10
Logged-In User
Summary
In this chapter, I covered how to set up user authentication using ASP.NET Core Identity with Entity Framework Core 5. We first installed the needed NuGet packages and then updated our code. We then created and ran a migration to update our database. After that, we scaffolded an Identity UI and tested that it worked successfully. In the next chapter, I will cover how to retrieve and display data from our SQL Server on our ASP.NET MVC Core web app.
