ASP.NET Core Web API Authentication

Now, after I was pointed in the right direction, here's my complete solution:

This is the middleware class which is executed on every incoming request and checks if the request has the correct credentials. If no credentials are present or if they are wrong, the service responds with a 401 Unauthorized error immediately.

public class AuthenticationMiddleware
{
    private readonly RequestDelegate _next;

    public AuthenticationMiddleware(RequestDelegate next)
    {
        _next = next;
    }

    public async Task Invoke(HttpContext context)
    {
        string authHeader = context.Request.Headers["Authorization"];
        if (authHeader != null && authHeader.StartsWith("Basic"))
        {
            //Extract credentials
            string encodedUsernamePassword = authHeader.Substring("Basic ".Length).Trim();
            Encoding encoding = Encoding.GetEncoding("iso-8859-1");
            string usernamePassword = encoding.GetString(Convert.FromBase64String(encodedUsernamePassword));

            int seperatorIndex = usernamePassword.IndexOf(':');

            var username = usernamePassword.Substring(0, seperatorIndex);
            var password = usernamePassword.Substring(seperatorIndex + 1);

            if(username == "test" && password == "test" )
            {
                await _next.Invoke(context);
            }
            else
            {
                context.Response.StatusCode = 401; //Unauthorized
                return;
            }
        }
        else
        {
            // no authorization header
            context.Response.StatusCode = 401; //Unauthorized
            return;
        }
    }
}

The middleware extension needs to be called in the Configure method of the service Startup class

public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IHostingEnvironment env, ILoggerFactory loggerFactory)
{
    loggerFactory.AddConsole(Configuration.GetSection("Logging"));
    loggerFactory.AddDebug();

    app.UseMiddleware<AuthenticationMiddleware>();

    app.UseMvc();
}

And that's all! :)

A very good resource for middleware in .Net Core and authentication can be found here: https://www.exceptionnotfound.net/writing-custom-middleware-in-asp-net-core-1-0/

You can implement a middleware which handles Basic authentication.

public async Task Invoke(HttpContext context)
{
    var authHeader = context.Request.Headers.Get("Authorization");
    if (authHeader != null && authHeader.StartsWith("basic", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
    {
        var token = authHeader.Substring("Basic ".Length).Trim();
        System.Console.WriteLine(token);
        var credentialstring = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(Convert.FromBase64String(token));
        var credentials = credentialstring.Split(':');
        if(credentials[0] == "admin" && credentials[1] == "admin")
        {
            var claims = new[] { new Claim("name", credentials[0]), new Claim(ClaimTypes.Role, "Admin") };
            var identity = new ClaimsIdentity(claims, "Basic");
            context.User = new ClaimsPrincipal(identity);
        }
    }
    else
    {
        context.Response.StatusCode = 401;
        context.Response.Headers.Set("WWW-Authenticate", "Basic realm=\"dotnetthoughts.net\"");
    }
    await _next(context);
}

This code is written in a beta version of asp.net core. Hope it helps.

To use this only for specific controllers for example use this:

app.UseWhen(x => (x.Request.Path.StartsWithSegments("/api", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase)), 
            builder =>
            {
                builder.UseMiddleware<AuthenticationMiddleware>();
            });