Azure B2C : Differences with Access Control Services (ACS)

B2C is the way forward for ACS.

Refer : The future of Azure ACS is Azure Active Directory.

I put this table together:

Note 1: Azure B2C : Differences with Azure Active Directory (AAD)

Any E&O, fell free to discuss via comments. 

Enjoy!

ACS : Powershell commands with Appfabriclabs / Proxy

The ACS team have just announced a set of Powershell commands for ACS.

See here.

Two small problems - they work for ACS but not for Appfabriclabs and ,secondly, they don't work for people who have to work behind a proxy.

Some quick changes to the provided VS project should have you running in no time.

For Appfabriclabs:

In Constants.cs

//public const string AcsHostName = "accesscontrol.windows.net";
public const string AcsHostName = "accesscontrol.appfabriclabs.com";

For the proxy:

In ServiceManagementWrapper.cs - just add the proxy code below.

private string GetTokenFromACS()
{
    var client = new WebClient();

    WebProxy proxy = new WebProxy("1.2.3.4", 1234);
            
    proxy.BypassProxyOnLocal = true;
    proxy.UseDefaultCredentials = true;
          
    client.Proxy = proxy;

    client.BaseAddress = string.Format("https://{0}.{1}", this.serviceNamespace,
    Constants.AcsHostName);

    ...
}

Then rerun the startHere.cmd to update and install the plugin.

Enjoy!

ADFS : Federating with SelfSTS

SelfSTS is an extremely useful application which simplifies WIF testing by allowing you to define claims without an instance of AD installed.

Given that it supports the WS-Federation protocol, it should in theory be able to be federated with AFDS v2.0. However, in practice, it doesn't fly. ADFS complains that there are unsupported elements in the federation metadata. If you try and import the metadata via a file, ADFS complains that only https URL's are supported. SelfSTS has the common or garden http URL.

However, this article shows how to federate SelfSTS with Azure's Appfabric ACS. Since you can federate ACS with ADFS, you can essentially get the federation working - albeit in a round-about way.

Enjoy!