ASP.NET Core Identity & Cookies

Question

I have an ASP.NET Core site using AspNetCore.Identity.EntityFrameworkCore 1.1.1 and cookies to authorize/authenticate my users. No matter what I choose as my setting in the

Answer 1

I think the problem was that I was persisting data to a cookie with different settings.

Not sure if it's the proper way to do it, but I was able to solve the problem by using both services.AddIdentity and app.UseCookieAuthentication as below.

In ConfigureServices, set the cookie for log in:

        //  set the cookie for sign in
        services.AddIdentity<ApplicationUser, IdentityRole>(config =>
        {               
            //  Require a confirmed email in order to log in
            config.SignIn.RequireConfirmedEmail = true;
            // Cookie settings
            config.Cookies.ApplicationCookie.ExpireTimeSpan = TimeSpan.FromHours(10);
            config.Cookies.ApplicationCookie.LoginPath = "/Account/LogIn";
            config.Cookies.ApplicationCookie.LogoutPath = "/Account/LogOut";
        }).AddEntityFrameworkStores<ApplicationDbContext>().AddDefaultTokenProviders();

In Configure set the cookie scheme used to persist claims:

        //  Add cookie middleware to the configure an identity request and persist it to a cookie.
        app.UseCookieAuthentication(new CookieAuthenticationOptions
        {
            AuthenticationScheme = "Cookie",
            LoginPath = new PathString("/Account/Login/"),
            AccessDeniedPath = new PathString("/Account/Forbidden/"),
            AutomaticAuthenticate = true,
            AutomaticChallenge = true,
            //ExpireTimeSpan = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10),
            ExpireTimeSpan = TimeSpan.FromHours(10),
            SlidingExpiration = true,
        });

In the log in method, persist the claims:

await HttpContext.Authentication.SignInAsync("Cookie", userPrincipal);

Answer 2

You do not need a separate CookieAuthentication middleware when you are using ASPNET identity. UseIdentity() will do that for you and generate a cookie. You can set the "cookie options" in the AddIdentity block of the application like so:

     services.AddIdentity<ApplicationUser, IdentityRole>(config =>
            {
                //  Require a confirmed email in order to log in
                config.SignIn.RequireConfirmedEmail = true;

               // Your Cookie settings
              config.Cookies.ApplicationCookie.ExpireTimeSpan = TimeSpan.FromDays(1);
              config.Cookies.ApplicationCookie.LoginPath = "/Account/LogIn";
              config.Cookies.ApplicationCookie.LogoutPath = "/Account/LogOut";
            }).AddEntityFrameworkStores<ApplicationDbContext().AddDefaultTokenProviders();

Also, take a look at https://stackoverflow.com/a/34981457/1137785, it gives a background of this sort of a scenario with a very good explanation.