Authentication of WPF and WCF data services at the request level?

Question

So, I swear I'm completely confused about how to protect WCF data services. In this case, is there a simplified way to verify that the client that sends the data to the WCF service is more authenticated, that the client itself is the client that I wrote, and not some kind of mock client?

Any urls that can help me decode this problem?

Answer 1

I use the API key to "protect" my services through HTTPS and only allow access to specific IP addresses using IIS. Just override OnStartProcessingRequest()as follows:

    protected override void OnStartProcessingRequest(ProcessRequestArgs Args)
    {
        // allow the metadata to be retrieved without specifying an API key by appending $metadata on the end
        if (Args.RequestUri.Segments.Last().Replace("/", String.Empty) != "$metadata")
        {
            // check if a valid API key has been passed in (see Configuration.xml)
            if (!IsValidAPIKey(Args.OperationContext.RequestHeaders["APIKey"])) throw new DataServiceException("Invalid API key");
        }

        base.OnStartProcessingRequest(Args);
    }

    private bool IsValidAPIKey(string PassedAPIKey)
    {
        if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(PassedAPIKey))
        {
            Guid APIKey;

            // Configuration.APIKeys is just a simple list that reads from an XML file
            if (Guid.TryParse(PassedAPIKey, out APIKey) && Configuration.APIKeys.Exists(x => x.Key == APIKey)) return true;
        }

        return false;
    }

My xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<ArrayOfAPIKey xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <APIKey Key="ee5346fa-bca5-4236-ae6c-f35ae2f69e0b" ApplicationName="blah" />
</ArrayOfAPIKey>

My client side:

base.SendingRequest += (s, e) => { e.Request.Headers.Add("APIkey", "your-api-key-here");  };

Answer 2

WCF authN/authZ WCF vanilla. ( , IIS) ?

: Astoria/WCF WCF:  http://blogs.msdn.com/b/astoriateam/archive/tags/authentication/