ASP.NET Core Identity Tutorials

ASP.NET Core Identity Tutorials

In this ASP.NET Core Identity Tutorials For Beginners and Professionals course, I covered all the features of ASP.NET Core Identity. As you progress in this course, you will learn from the basic to advanced level features of ASP.NET Core Identity. Many new developers and students, even experienced software professionals, struggle to learn ASP.NET Core Identity quickly. To overcome this problem, I have prepared this course so you can learn it easily, quickly, and in depth.

For whom are these ASP.NET Core Identity Tutorials?

These ASP.NET Core Identity Tutorials are designed for Students, Beginners, Intermediate, and Professional Software Developers who want to learn ASP.NET Core Identity step by step. We will provide a hands-on approach to the subject with step-by-step program examples that will assist you in learning and putting the acquired knowledge into practice.

Important Note: To fully take advantage of this course, please read all the articles in the sequence we added to it. Each article is linked with its previous articles, so if you miss any article, you will find it difficult to understand the concepts. I will explain all the ASP.NET Core Identity concepts using a Single ASP.NET Core MVC Application.

What is ASP.NET Core Identity?

ASP.NET Core Identity is a Membership Management System that provides login functionality to the application, such as user registration, sign-in, sign-out, password recovery, account lockout, account verification via SMS and Email, role-based authentication, claim-based authentication, third-party authentication, external authentication, two-factor authentication, etc. The following are some of the key features of ASP.NET Core Identity:

• User Management: ASP.NET Core Identity provides functionality for creating, updating, deleting, and querying user accounts. That means managing the User data.
• Roles Management: ASP.NET Core Identity supports role-based authorization. We can create Roles for our application, and then these Roles are assigned to the users.
• Password Management: It has built-in functionality for password hashing, password validation policies, account lockout, and other security features to protect user accounts.
• User Authentication: It provides functionality for authenticating users. Authentication is the process of determining a user’s identity.
• User Authorization: Once a user is authenticated, ASP.NET Core Identity can authorize user access to certain resources or functionalities within an application based on roles or claims.
• Roles-Based Authentication: This type of Authentication Allows users to be assigned roles, which can be used for identity and access control. That means, based on the roles assigned to the user, we can restrict access to certain resources.
• Claims-Based Authentication: This type of authentication allows users to be assigned claims, which can be used for identity and access control, similar to Role-based Authentication.
• External Login Providers: ASP.NET Core Identity supports integration with external authentication providers like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft.
• Two-Factor Authentication (2FA): It supports two-factor authentication (2FA), enhancing the security of your application by requiring a second form of user verification.
• Customizable and Extensible: It allows us to customize the User Model, Role Model, and Validation Logic and integrate them with existing databases.
• Security Features: It also supports account confirmation, password recovery, and prevention against common attacks like SQL Injection, CSRF (Cross-Site Request Forgery), and XSS (Cross-Site Scripting).

ASP.NET Core Identity Key Components:

The following are the key components of ASP.NET Core Identity:

Identity Core Components:

Using the following components, we can perform different types of operations. Basically, the following are classes in ASP.NET Core Identity, which provides many methods for performing different operations on the Identity database.

• UserManager: This class in ASP.NET Core Identity is responsible for managing users in the application. It provides functionality for creating, updating, deleting, and retrieving user information from the ASP.NET Core Identity database.
• RoleManager: This class in ASP.NET Core Identity is responsible for managing roles in the application. It provides functionality for creating, updating, deleting, retrieving roles, and assigning them to users.
• SignInManager: This class in ASP.NET Core Identity handles sign-in and sign-out operations and provides functionalities for two-factor authentication and external authentication.

Data Models:

The following are the Model classes in ASP.NET Core Identity used to hold the data in memory.

• IdentityUser: This is the default User class in ASP.NET Core Identity, which includes common properties like UserName, Email, PhoneNumber, etc. This class can also be extended to include custom properties for additional user information as per your business requirements, such as First Name, Last Name, Date of Birth, etc.
• IdentityRole: This is the default Role class in ASP.NET Core Identity. It stores Role information such as Role ID and Name. This class can also be extended to include custom role information, such as Role Description.

IdentityDbContext:

• IdentityDbContext: This is the Identity Context Class Inherited from the Entity Framework Core DbContext class. This class is responsible for interacting with the ASP.NET Core Identity database that stores the identity data.

When to Use ASP.NET Core Identity?

The following are some of the scenarios where we need to use ASP.NET Core Identity:

• User Authentication and Authorization: ASP.NET Core Identity provides the solution if your application requires membership management. That means we need to use ASP.NET Core Identity when we need standard user registration, login functionalities using username and password, and more advanced features, like external logins (Google, Facebook, etc.), two-factor authentication, account lockout, etc.
• Role-Based Access Control: To implement Role-Based Authorization in your application, you need to use ASP.NET Core Identity. It allows you to manage roles and assign them to users, enabling role-based authorization in your application.
• Security and Compliance Needs: If your application handles sensitive user data and needs to comply with security standards (Data Encryption, Secure Authentication, Access Control, Secure Session Management, Input Validation, etc.), you need to use ASP.NET Core Identity, which provides these essential security features. 

What is an XSS Attack in a Web Application?

An XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) attack is a type of security vulnerability found in web applications. This allows attackers to inject malicious scripts into web pages viewed by other users.

What is a CSRF Attack in a Web Application?

A Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attack in a web application is a type of security vulnerability that allows an attacker to perform actions on behalf of a user without their consent or knowledge.

What is a SQL injection Attack in a Web Application?

An SQL Injection Attack is a type of cybersecurity vulnerability that occurs in a web application when an attacker manipulates a SQL query through the application’s user input. The risk arises primarily due to insufficient input validation, allowing the attacker to insert or “inject” their own malicious SQL code into the query.

Prerequisites to Learn ASP.NET Core Identity

To learn ASP.NET Core Identity effectively, the following are the prerequisites:

• Basic Understanding of ASP.NET Core: Basic understanding of ASP.NET Core, including MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture. Understanding of how to create Web APIs using ASP.NET Core.
• C# Programming Language: Good understanding of C# Language. This is the primary language used for developing ASP.NET Core applications. 
• HTML, CSS, and JavaScript: Basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, as these are essential for building the front end of Web Applications.
• Entity Framework Core: Understanding the Entity Framework Core is Mandatory. EF Core is commonly used for database operations in ASP.NET Core applications. ASP.NET Core Identity uses EF Core to Perform the Operations on the database.
• Basic Understanding of Databases: Basic knowledge of relational databases and SQL is mandatory. It is also important to understand how to design databases and work with tables, relationships, and queries.
• Understanding of HTTP and Web APIs: Basic knowledge of HTTP protocol, request/response patterns, and status codes. Familiarity with RESTful services and how Web APIs work.

Note: If we missed any topics in this ASP.NET Core Identity Course, please let us know by leaving a comment in the Comment Box, and we promise that we will publish articles on that topic as soon as possible.

Lastly, your valuable feedback is essential and means a lot to us. So, if you have a few minutes, please let us know your thoughts and feedback on this ASP.NET Core Identity course.

Course Information

Course Instructor

Dot Net Tutorials Author

Author: Pranaya Rout Pranaya Rout is a Senior Technical Architect with more than 11 Years of Experience, Microsoft MVP, Author, YouTuber, and Blogger eager to learn new technologies. Pranaya Rout has published more than 3,000 articles in his 11-year career. Pranaya Rout has very good experience with Microsoft Technologies, Including C#, VB, ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Web API, EF, EF Core, ADO.NET, LINQ, SQL Server, MYSQL, Oracle, ASP.NET Core, Cloud Computing, Microservices, Design Patterns and still learning new technologies.