Part 3: Adding Basic Authentication to Asp.Net Core the right way

This blog is all about adding Basic Authentication to Asp.Net Core.

Warning: Although implementing Basic Authentication seems easy, it brings a vulnerability to your site! names and passwords provided are sent over the internet unencrypted. This means: the authentication method does not hide the name and password for hackers. You have to encrypt the communication yourself! Therefore, always combine Basic Authentication with SSL, also known as HTTPS.

In the past, I have written my own simple Basic Authentication NuGet package. It’s still ok for simple classic Asp.Net MVC projects.

But I want to use Basic Authentication In Asp.Net Core. Instead of (re)writing my own NuGet package, I checked out the NuGet store and found a nice solution.

This NuGet package provides me the flexibility to add Basic Authentication to my (test) projects.

In this blog, we will see what we have to do to get it running. And we will see how we can beef up the security by using HTTPS.

Part 1: Getting SignalR running on Asp.Net MVC Core

Microsoft has a very powerful implementation of WebSockets available named SignalR. Personally, I like the fact it automatically scales down if needed to other communication solutions if WebSockets is not working (like long polling).

I used it in the past several times for dashboards but in my current project, I had a new challenge. We are using Asp.Net MVC Core. This is ‘the latest’ flavor of Asp.Net and our websites can now run on both Windows and Linux.

But Asp.Net MVC Core has broken with the past, which is a good thing but it also needs a different way to activate SignalR.

Microsoft has provided documentation but it was written towards the standard, non-MVC applications.

It took me a while to get SignalR running.

But first, let me introduce you to the steps to be taken to get SignalR running on Asp.Net MVC Core.