ADFS : Beware the FedUtil shortcut

 

Running FedUtil is a PIA.

I find it much easier to save the web.config, deploy the application and then use WinMerge to copy over the relevant pieces from the saved web.config to the deployed one.

But beware.

There is also the metadata directory.

If ADFS is setup to update from metadata and you redeploy it, it drags over the new (and probably incorrect) metadata into the RP section. So if you were testing on your PC i.e. “localhost” suddenly all hell breaks loose because ADFS will throw an exception. I’ll bet your application is not on the ADFS box, right?

So save the metadata as well.

And always run a smoke test after a redeploy.

Enjoy!

Windows : File names that start with a period

 

If you play around with Java on your Windows box, sooner or later you are going to hit the problem where you need to create a file that starts with a period (aka. dot or full stop) e.g. “.keypass”.

Explorer won’t let you do this.

The solution is to create a file called keypass (no period) in Explorer and then use the command prompt to run a DOS command:

ren keypass .keypass

“ren” = “rename”

Good, old DOS to the rescue!

Enjoy!

Firefox : Displaying the SAML content

 

The SAML Tracer add-on is a really useful tool to display the SAML message flow during SSO and logout with ADFS.

(Ain’t gonna help you with WIF though because that’s WS-Federation through and through and there ain’t no add-on for that).

Neat!

Enjoy!

Visual Studio : XML comments

 

Also called programmatic comments or xml documentation.

If you have a method like:

public void blah (String a, int b)
{
            
}

and you want the comments, just type /// on the line before and you get:

/// <summary>
/// 
/// </summary>
/// <param name="a"></param>
/// <param name="b"></param>
public void blah (String a, int b)
{
            
}

If you have ReSharper, put the cursor over the method name i.e. “blah” and press Ctrl / Shift / F1.

You get a neat popup window.

Enjoy!