Startup

IdentityServer is a combination of middleware and services. All configuration is done in your startup class.

Configuring services

You add the IdentityServer services to the DI system by calling:

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
    var builder = services.AddIdentityServer();
}

Optionally you can pass in options into this call. See here for details on options.

This will return you a builder object that in turn has a number of convenience methods to wire up additional services.

Key material

IdentityServer supports X.509 certificates (both raw files and a reference to the Windows certificate store), RSA keys and EC keys for token signatures and validation. Each key can be configured with a (compatible) signing algorithm, e.g. RS256, RS384, RS512, PS256, PS384, PS512, ES256, ES384 or ES512.

You can configure the key material with the following methods:

  • AddSigningCredential

    Adds a signing key that provides the specified key material to the various token creation/validation services.

  • AddDeveloperSigningCredential

    Creates temporary key material at startup time. This is for dev scenarios. The generated key will be persisted in the local directory by default.

  • AddValidationKey

    Adds a key for validating tokens. They will be used by the internal token validator and will show up in the discovery document.

In-Memory configuration stores

The various “in-memory” configuration APIs allow for configuring IdentityServer from an in-memory list of configuration objects. These “in-memory” collections can be hard-coded in the hosting application, or could be loaded dynamically from a configuration file or a database. By design, though, these collections are only created when the hosting application is starting up.

Use of these configuration APIs are designed for use when prototyping, developing, and/or testing where it is not necessary to dynamically consult database at runtime for the configuration data. This style of configuration might also be appropriate for production scenarios if the configuration rarely changes, or it is not inconvenient to require restarting the application if the value must be changed.

  • AddInMemoryClients

    Registers IClientStore and ICorsPolicyService implementations based on the in-memory collection of Client configuration objects.

  • AddInMemoryIdentityResources

    Registers IResourceStore implementation based on the in-memory collection of IdentityResource configuration objects.

  • AddInMemoryApiScopes

    Registers IResourceStore implementation based on the in-memory collection of ApiScope configuration objects.

  • AddInMemoryApiResources

    Registers IResourceStore implementation based on the in-memory collection of ApiResource configuration objects.

Test stores

The TestUser class models a user, their credentials, and claims in IdentityServer. Use of TestUser is similar to the use of the “in-memory” stores in that it is intended for when prototyping, developing, and/or testing. The use of TestUser is not recommended in production.

  • AddTestUsers

    Registers TestUserStore based on a collection of TestUser objects. TestUserStore is used by the default quickstart UI. Also registers implementations of IProfileService and IResourceOwnerPasswordValidator.

Additional services

  • AddExtensionGrantValidator

    Adds IExtensionGrantValidator implementation for use with extension grants.

  • AddSecretParser

    Adds ISecretParser implementation for parsing client or API resource credentials.

  • AddSecretValidator

    Adds ISecretValidator implementation for validating client or API resource credentials against a credential store.

  • AddResourceOwnerValidator

    Adds IResourceOwnerPasswordValidator implementation for validating user credentials for the resource owner password credentials grant type.

  • AddProfileService

    Adds IProfileService implementation for connecting to your custom user profile store. The DefaultProfileService class provides the default implementation which relies upon the authentication cookie as the only source of claims for issuing in tokens.

  • AddAuthorizeInteractionResponseGenerator

    Adds IAuthorizeInteractionResponseGenerator implementation to customize logic at authorization endpoint for when a user must be shown a UI for error, login, consent, or any other custom page. The AuthorizeInteractionResponseGenerator class provides a default implementation, so consider deriving from this existing class if you need to augment the existing behavior.

  • AddCustomAuthorizeRequestValidator

    Adds ICustomAuthorizeRequestValidator implementation to customize request parameter validation at the authorization endpoint.

  • AddCustomTokenRequestValidator

    Adds ICustomTokenRequestValidator implementation to customize request parameter validation at the token endpoint.

  • AddRedirectUriValidator

    Adds IRedirectUriValidator implementation to customize redirect URI validation.

  • AddAppAuthRedirectUriValidator

    Adds a an “AppAuth” (OAuth 2.0 for Native Apps) compliant redirect URI validator (does strict validation but also allows http://127.0.0.1 with random port).

  • AddJwtBearerClientAuthentication

    Adds support for client authentication using JWT bearer assertions.

  • AddMutualTlsSecretValidators

    Adds the X509 secret validators for mutual TLS.

Caching

Client and resource configuration data is used frequently by IdentityServer. If this data is being loaded from a database or other external store, then it might be expensive to frequently re-load the same data.

  • AddInMemoryCaching

    To use any of the caches described below, an implementation of ICache<T> must be registered in DI. This API registers a default in-memory implementation of ICache<T> that’s based on ASP.NET Core’s MemoryCache.

  • AddClientStoreCache

    Registers a IClientStore decorator implementation which will maintain an in-memory cache of Client configuration objects. The cache duration is configurable on the Caching configuration options on the IdentityServerOptions.

  • AddResourceStoreCache

    Registers a IResourceStore decorator implementation which will maintain an in-memory cache of IdentityResource and ApiResource configuration objects. The cache duration is configurable on the Caching configuration options on the IdentityServerOptions.

  • AddCorsPolicyCache

    Registers a ICorsPolicyService decorator implementation which will maintain an in-memory cache of the results of the CORS policy service evaluation. The cache duration is configurable on the Caching configuration options on the IdentityServerOptions.

Further customization of the cache is possible:

The default caching relies upon the ICache<T> implementation. If you wish to customize the caching behavior for the specific configuration objects, you can replace this implementation in the dependency injection system.

The default implementation of the ICache<T> itself relies upon the IMemoryCache interface (and MemoryCache implementation) provided by .NET. If you wish to customize the in-memory caching behavior, you can replace the IMemoryCache implementation in the dependency injection system.

Configuring the pipeline

You need to add IdentityServer to the pipeline by calling:

public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app)
{
    app.UseIdentityServer();
}

Note

UseIdentityServer includes a call to UseAuthentication, so it’s not necessary to have both.

There is no additional configuration for the middleware.

Be aware that order matters in the pipeline. For example, you will want to add IdentitySever before the UI framework that implements the login screen.