Native Authentication

[vishalvatsal]

Hi Team,

Not sure if this is the right place to bring this up. Is there a reason you do not have any samples that would use Native authentication?

I am new to Xamarin. And I do think that if I have an android phone, majority of time a user will have a google account, why would you want user to enter credentials again?

Can you not just use existing identity already on the phone? If so can you at-least have a sample or implement it in your samples?

Thank you

[rob-derosa]

This specific sample is about sharing common code across multiple OS. iOS does not support a "system Google account" that other apps can use for authentication.

[amplicade]

Was there any specific reason to not use Xamarin.Auth but rather have a kind of custom implementation for Google Login? Do you expect any issues replacing it with Xamarin.Auth and using also Facebook, Twitter, etc.?

[rob-derosa]

In order to secure the Azure backend against unauthenticated calls, I had to use the Azure-sanctioned APIs to authenticate in order to generate an Azure auth token.

If you're not using Azure on the backend, you can authenticate in whatever manner you choose.

[amplicade]

Ok I see, so using OAuth would not be saving our backend. Following your point, I tried to add Facebook, on the backend as well as on the App (I followed the Azure docs here and here).

My Backend now has following new route:

        public async Task<FacebookCredentials> GetUserIdentityFacebook()
        {
            ServiceUser serviceUser = User as ServiceUser;
            if (serviceUser != null)
            {
                var identity = await serviceUser.GetIdentitiesAsync();
                var credentials = identity.OfType<FacebookCredentials>().FirstOrDefault();
                return credentials;
            }
            return null;
        }

and my App has the following calls:

1. DisplayWebView() in Authentication.cs on iOS/Android:
   return await AzureService.Instance.Client.LoginAsync(Forms.Context, MobileServiceAuthenticationProvider.Facebook);
2. ShowGoogleAuthenticationView() in AuthenticationViewModel.cs
   var identity = await AzureService.Instance.Client.InvokeApiAsync("getUserIdentityFacebook", null, HttpMethod.Get, null);

Starting the App it is trying to load the Facebook Login Page, but it is showing an error "Not Logged In: You are not logged in. Please login and try again."

I don't know if I'm missing anything here. I tried a lot getting this running with Facebook but I'm stuck right now. I got this working with Twitter.

Any help is highly appreciated! Thank you a lot in advance.

[rob-derosa]

I'm no Azure expert so I unfortunately cannot advise. I'd hit up the Azue forums or give StackOverflow a try.

[amplicade]

I've found wrong setting in Facebook and it works now. App supports FB, Twitter & Google now. I'm happy to share my code if you are interested. Maybe its worth considering it for the upcoming version.

[shainefisher]

I would be interested in seeing this code, if you are still willing to share it? Thanks