Skip to main content

Testing a token protected API using user-jwts

Testing a token-protected API can be a challenge. You need to have an identity and access management solution in place to get a valid access token that can be passed to your API.

.NET 7 makes this whole process easier by introducing a new command line tool; user-jwts. This allows you to generate JSON Web Tokens that can be used during development.

Let me walk you through the steps to use this new tool.

Getting started with user-jwts

I have an existing ASP.NET Core application configured to use JTW Bearer authentication:

I introduce a new endpoint that requires authorization:

Before .NET 7 to be able to test this endpoint, we need to register this API in your IAM solution and log in by providing valid credentials. Not impossible to do, but still a lot of work...

Let’s invoke the user-jwts tool:

dotnet user-jwts create

Executing this command will result in the following actions:

  • A JWT token is created and stored as a ‘user secret’ on your local machine.
  • The appsettings.development.json is updated with the necessary configuration details:

Now we can call our API by passing the generated JWT token:

curl -i -H "Authorization: Bearer {token}" https://localhost:7214/secret

If you want to create a token for a specific user and scope, you can do that as well:

dotnet user-jwts create –name Bart --scope "openid" –scope "profile"

You can find the complete example app here: https://github.com/wullemsb/UserJwtsDemo

If you want to learn more, check out the documentation: Generate tokens with dotnet user-jwts | Microsoft Learn

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

.NET 8–Keyed/Named Services

A feature that a lot of IoC container libraries support but that was missing in the default DI container provided by Microsoft is the support for Keyed or Named Services. This feature allows you to register the same type multiple times using different names, allowing you to resolve a specific instance based on the circumstances. Although there is some controversy if supporting this feature is a good idea or not, it certainly can be handy. To support this feature a new interface IKeyedServiceProvider got introduced in .NET 8 providing 2 new methods on our ServiceProvider instance: object? GetKeyedService(Type serviceType, object? serviceKey); object GetRequiredKeyedService(Type serviceType, object? serviceKey); To use it, we need to register our service using one of the new extension methods: Resolving the service can be done either through the FromKeyedServices attribute: or by injecting the IKeyedServiceProvider interface and calling the GetRequiredKeyedServic...
Read more

Azure DevOps/ GitHub emoji

I’m really bad at remembering emoji’s. So here is cheat sheet with all emoji’s that can be used in tools that support the github emoji markdown markup: All credits go to rcaviers who created this list.
Read more

Kubernetes–Limit your environmental impact

Reducing the carbon footprint and CO2 emission of our (cloud) workloads, is a responsibility of all of us. If you are running a Kubernetes cluster, have a look at Kube-Green . kube-green is a simple Kubernetes operator that automatically shuts down (some of) your pods when you don't need them. A single pod produces about 11 Kg CO2eq per year( here the calculation). Reason enough to give it a try! Installing kube-green in your cluster The easiest way to install the operator in your cluster is through kubectl. We first need to install a cert-manager: kubectl apply -f https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.14.5/cert-manager.yaml Remark: Wait a minute before you continue as it can take some time before the cert-manager is up & running inside your cluster. Now we can install the kube-green operator: kubectl apply -f https://github.com/kube-green/kube-green/releases/latest/download/kube-green.yaml Now in the namespace where we want t...
Read more