How do you pass user credentials from WebClient to a WCF REST service?
- by Alex
I am trying to expose a WCT REST service and only users with valid username and password would be able to access it. The username and password are stored in a SQL database.
Here is the service contract:
public interface IDataService
{
[OperationContract]
[WebGet(ResponseFormat = WebMessageFormat.Json)]
byte[] GetData(double startTime, double endTime);
}
Here is the WCF configuration:
<bindings>
<webHttpBinding>
<binding name="SecureBinding">
<security mode="Transport">
<transport clientCredentialType="Basic"/>
</security>
</binding>
</webHttpBinding>
</bindings>
<behaviors>
<serviceBehaviors>
<behavior name="DataServiceBehavior">
<serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true"/>
<serviceCredentials>
<userNameAuthentication
userNamePasswordValidationMode="Custom"
customUserNamePasswordValidatorType=
"CustomValidator, WCFHost" />
</serviceCredentials>
</behavior>
</serviceBehaviors>
</behaviors>
<services>
<service behaviorConfiguration="DataServiceBehavior" name="DataService">
<endpoint address="" binding="webHttpBinding"
bindingConfiguration="SecureBinding" contract="IDataService" />
</service>
</services>
I am accessing the service via the WebClient class within a Silverlight application. However, I have not been able to figure out how to pass the user credentials to the service. I tried various values for client.Credentials but none of them seems to trigger the code in my custom validator. I am getting the following error: The underlying connection was closed: An unexpected error occurred on a send.
Here is some sample code I have tried:
WebClient client = new WebClient();
client.Credentials = new NetworkCredential("name", "password", "domain");
client.OpenReadCompleted += new OpenReadCompletedEventHandler(GetData);
client.OpenReadAsync(new Uri(uriString));
If I set the security mode to None, the whole thing works. I also tried other clientCredentialType values and none of them worked. I also self-hosted the WCF service to eliminate the issues related to IIS trying to authenticate a user before the service gets a chance.
Any comment on what the underlying issues may be would be much appreciated. Thanks.
Update: Thanks to Mehmet's excellent suggestions. Here is the tracing configuration I had:
<system.diagnostics>
<sources>
<source name="System.ServiceModel"
switchValue="Information, ActivityTracing"
propagateActivity="true">
<listeners>
<add name="xml" />
</listeners>
</source>
<source name="System.IdentityModel" switchValue="Information,
ActivityTracing" propagateActivity="true">
<listeners>
<add name="xml" />
</listeners>
</source>
</sources>
<sharedListeners>
<add name="xml"
type="System.Diagnostics.XmlWriterTraceListener"
initializeData="c:\Traces.svclog" />
</sharedListeners>
</system.diagnostics>
But I did not see any message coming from my Silverlight client. As for https vs http, I used https as follows:
string baseAddress = "https://localhost:6600/";
_webServiceHost = new WebServiceHost(typeof(DataServices),
new Uri(baseAddress));
_webServiceHost.Open();
However, I did not configure any SSL certificate. Is this the problem?
