WIF session helper APIs for browser-based (passive) applications in Thinktecture IdentityModel
Recently I added several convenience APIs to Thinktecture.IdentityModel. The goal of the helper methods is to provide simple and standard implementations for behaviors that you might want in your WIF-enabled ASP.NET application. Some of these behaviors could be configured in web.config, but some others cannot and require code. In both cases, the APIs provide a simple mechanism to enable the various behaviors.
This post will serve as the starting documentation for these APIs and I will provide a post per behavior. I will update the links here as the posts become available. Here is the list of behaviors the APIs enable:
- Sliding sessions
- Configuring session token lifetime
- Overriding WS-Federation token lifetime
- Configuring persistent session token cookies
- Server-side session token caching
- Configuring machine key protection of session tokens
- Suppressing session token validation exceptions
- Suppress login redirects for API clients (e.g., WebAPI and Ajax)
- Dynamic issuer name registry direct from STS federation metadata
The APIs are broken down into two classes based upon when the configuration needs to be set to enable the behavior:
- PassiveSessionConfiguration is for one-time configuration that can be set in Application_Start in global.asax, and
- PassiveModuleConfiguration is per-module configuration that needs to be set in Init in global.asax (which I discussed here).
I plan to update the 4.0 version of IdentityModel with the same APIs in the coming weeks.
brockallen 
Hi Brock,
Is there any chance of getting the Nuget package updated to include support for the new passive configuration helpers?
Thanks!
Yes! I just need to prod Dominick to do it.
Ok, it’s up on NuGet now.
Just another friendly request for a Nuget package update. :)
Thanks!
Yep — Dom’s at a conference this week and he has the keys.
Ok, it’s up on NuGet now.