Unified static class between HttpContext and SignalR HubCallerContext

Question

I have a lot of code that depends on HttpContext.Current, and I noticed that requests that come from SignalR hubs have HttpContext.Current == null, so my code b

Answer 1

SignalR gives you access to HubCallerContex instead of HttpContext. You can access HubCallerContext object by using keyword context. If you want to access HttpContext you can fetch it from the context as follows:

System.Web.HttpContextBase httpContext = Context.Request.GetHttpContext();

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Just spent a couple of hours on this problem.

It looks like there is no way to get SignalR context outside of hub class in the same manner like you would do this with HttpContext:

var identity = HttpContext.Current.User.Identity;

or inside Ninject context:

HttpContextBase httpContext = context.Kernel.Get<HttpContextBase>();
var identity = httpContext.Current.User.Identity;

At least the answer to this question states so: Get SignalR User (Hub.Context) outside of hub.

But in this particular case when you need to get current user identity there is a solution which works in both worlds: WebApi/MVC and SignalR.

IPrincipal principal = Thread.CurrentPrincipal;
var identity = principal.Identity;

I used this to get user identity inside my dependency injection code.

Morover, Context property is only available in hub methods (it is null inside hub constructor). But Thread.CurrentPrincipal.Identity will give you the user identity even inside hub constructor.