Implement HTTP Basic Auth in your Marketplace App

HTTP Basic Authentication is one of two authentication protocols supported by the Marketplace. Since this authentication method requires storing the user’s name and password for all access, we recommend that you use HTTP Basic Authentication only when you are creating an application for your own use or a single account.

HTTP Basic Authentication

HTTP Basic Authentication uses a user id and password to authenticate a user and then grant or deny access to a protected resource. The Marketplace implementation of HTTP Basic Authentication ignores the user id and requires a valid Marketplace account key (for example, /Xroufd9KIlLkr4Mjf8afk). As you design your application you need to decide whether you will include the account key in the application code, which makes your account key vulnerable to anyone who has the application, or ask the user to enter it at run time, which is error prone given the length and complexity of the key.

Preliminaries

The code to implement HTTP Basic Authentication is relatively short and simple. Before you get to the code you must do the following in your application code.

1. Ensure that your project includes System.Net and your service class or reference namespace.

   using System.Net;
   using service_class_namespace;
   

   Imports System.Net
   Imports service_class_namespace
   

2. Create a Uri instance from the service’s root URL.

   To find the service root URL:

   1. Click the My Data tab at the Marketplace home page.

   2. Locate the dataset you need the root service URL to.

   3. Click Use.

   4. Scroll down and click the Details tab.

   5. Include this URL in your application code.

   Uri serviceUri = new Uri(SERVICE_ROOT_URL);
   

   Private serviceUri As Uri
   serviceUri = new Uri(SERVICE_ROOT_URL)
   

3. Create an identifier of the type of the dataset’s container.

   There are two ways to find the container name.

   First,

   1. Open the Object Browser in Visual Studio.

   2. Locate your service class or reference.

   3. Double-click the class name to expand it.

   4. Locate a type whose name ends with “Container”.
      For example: ContosoSalesContainer.

   Alternatively, you can use the service root URL to open the metadata page of the service. For example, if the service root URL is https://datamarket.azure.com/data.ashx/contoso/sales/ navigate your browser to https://datamarket.azure.com/data.ashx/contoso/sales/$metadata.

   Find the EntityContainer tag. The value of the Name attribute is the service container name. Example: <EntityContainer Name="ContosoSalesContainer">

   ContosoSalesContainer context;
   

   Private context As ContosoSalesContainer
   

Implement HTTP Basic Authentication in an Application

There are just two steps to implement HTTP Basic Authentication.

1. Instantiate the context identifier.

   context = new ContosoSalesContainer(serviceUri);
   

   context = new ContosoSalesContainer(serviceUri)
   

2. Add the credentials to the context.

   context.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(USER_ID, SECRET_ACCOUNT_KEY);
   

   context.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(USER_ID, SECRET_ACCOUNT_KEY)
   

   Note

   At this time the Marketplace ignores the USER_ID so you can use an empty string in its place. Do not skip this parameter.

See Also

Tasks

Compare Fixed and Flexible Query Types
Create a Flexible Query Application
Create a Fixed Query Application

Concepts

Compare Flexible and Fixed Query Code