Authorization Interceptor: A simple and lightweight .NET package designed to streamline HttpClient authenticated requests
Authorization Interceptor is a custom handler added to your HttpClient builder. With it, there's no need to worry about the expiration time and management of the authorization headers of your requests. Offering the possibility to use OAuth2 with RefreshToken or custom headers, whenever a request is sent and its response is a status code 401 (Unauthorized), the Interceptor will update the authorization headers and resend the same request with the updated authorization headers.
Authorization Interceptor can use MemoryCache to store authorization headers according to their expiration time, thus, it's not necessary to login or generate authorization every time you need to send a request to the API.
Authorization Interceptor can also share the same authorization headers with other instances of the application (if your application runs in a dockerized environment with Kubernetes) using the idea of distributed cache, avoiding concurrency among instances to log in or generate authorization headers with the API by reusing the authorization generated by the primary instance.
Authorization Interceptor is installed from NuGet. Just run the following command in package manager console:
PM> Install-Package AuthorizationInterceptor
Or from the .NET CLI as:
dotnet add package AuthorizationInterceptor
When adding a new HttpClient, call the extension method AddAuthorizationInterceptorHandler, passing in the authentication class for the target API:
services.AddHttpClient("TargetApi")
.AddAuthorizationInterceptorHandler<TargetApiAuthClass>()This will make the TargetApi HttpClient use the Authorization Interceptor handler to generate and manage authorization headers.
By default, the package will not use any interceptor to store authorization headers so the recommendation is to use at least AuthorizationInterceptor.Extensions.MemoryCache package to store and manage the authorization headers lifecycle. Checkout Interceptors section.
The TargetApiAuthClass must implement the IAuthenticationHandler interface, so that the package can perform the necessary dependency injection and know where and when to generate the authorization. An example implementation of the class would look like this:
public class TargetApiAuthClass : IAuthenticationHandler
{
public async Task<AuthorizationHeaders?> AuthenticateAsync()
{
//The login call to the target API should be placed here, and it should return the authorization headers.
var authorization = LoginToMyTargetApi();
return new OAuthHeaders(authorization.AccessToken, authorization.TokenType, authorization.ExpiresIn, authorization.RefreshToken);
}
public async Task<AuthorizationHeaders?> UnauthenticateAsync(AuthorizationHeaders? expiredHeaders)
{
//This method is called when the interceptor captures a response with a status code of 401. It is most commonly used for integrations with APIs that use RefreshToken. If the target API does not have the refresh token functionality, you should implement the same call as in the `AuthenticateAsync` method.
var newHeaders = LoginWithRefreshToMyTargetApi(expiredHeaders.OAuthHeaders.RefreshToken);
return new OAuthHeaders(newHeaders.AccessToken, newHeaders.TokenType, newHeaders.ExpiresIn, newHeaders.RefreshToken);
}
}In the example above, we showed the TargetApiAuthClass class, which must implement the authentication methods with the target API. Initially, the authorization headers do not exist, so the package will call the AuthenticateAsync method just once and will store the authorization in memory cache (if the MemoryCache package was installed and configured), always consulting it from there. However, if there is a response with status code 401 (unauthorized), the package will call the UnauthenticateAsync method, passing the old/expired authorization and will return the new authorization.
Note that in the
AuthenticateAsyncandUnauthenticateAsyncmethods the return type isAuthorizationHeadersbut in the example above anOAuthHeadersis returned, because in this example we are assuming that the target API uses the OAuth2 authentication mechanism. However, if your target API does not have this functionality you can return a new object of typeAuthorizationHeadersthat inherits from a classDictionary<string, string>. In practice, it would look like this:
public async Task<AuthorizationHeaders?> AuthenticateAsync()
{
return new AuthorizationHeaders
{
{ "MyCustomAuthorizationHeader", "MytokenValue" },
{ "SomeOtherAuthorizationHeader", "OtherValue" }
};
}Assuming that your target API is legacy and it returns not only the status code 401 (unauthorized) for requests without authorization or with expired authorization but also returns 403 (forbidden). For this situation, there is a property in the options class called UnauthenticatedPredicate that customizes the type of predicate the package should evaluate for unauthorized requests.
In the extension method AddAuthorizationInterceptorHandler, pass this custom configuration in the following way:
services.AddHttpClient("TargetApi")
.AddAuthorizationInterceptorHandler<TargetApiAuthClass>(options =>
{
opts.UnauthenticatedPredicate = response => response.StatusCode == System.Net.HttpStatusCode.Forbidden ||
response.StatusCode == System.Net.HttpStatusCode.Unauthorized;
})Now, whenever there is a response with status code 401 or 403, the package will consider the authorization to be expired and will perform a new authentication.
By default, no interceptors is configured so the recommendation is to use at least AuthorizationInterceptor.Extensions.MemoryCache package to store and manage the authorization headers lifecycle in a memory cache system.
After install it, its simple to use:
services.AddHttpClient("TargetApi")
.AddAuthorizationInterceptorHandler<TargetApiAuthClass>(options =>
{
options.UseMemoryCacheInterceptor();
})- AuthorizationInterceptor.Extensions.MemoryCache
- AuthorizationInterceptor.Extensions.DistributedCache
If you need an specific interceptor integration and doesnt exists here, checkout the AuthorizationInterceptor.Extensions.Abstractions to create your own interceptor.
When we have a scalable application running in a dockerized environment with Kubernetes, there can be more than one instance of the same application. This can lead to authentication concurrency issues between instances and divergent authorization headers among them. To solve this, it is recommended to use a custom interceptor that implements the idea of distributed cache. Therefore, in addition to saving the authorization headers in memory, the application will also save them in a distributed cache so that other instances of the application can reuse the authorization already generated by a primary instance. This avoids multiple authentication calls and divergent authorizations.
In practice, you need to configure some library already available for .Net that uses the DistributedCache abstraction. Please check the official documentation of Distributed caching in ASP.NET Core
Let's assume you have configured some package that uses the DistributedCache abstraction (Redis, NCache, etc), then you should install the AuthorizationInterceptor.Extensions.DistributedCache extension package. In the options of the Authorization Interceptor, call the respective extension method UseDistributedCacheInterceptor.
services.AddHttpClient("TargetApi")
.AddAuthorizationInterceptorHandler<TargetApiAuthClass>(options =>
{
options.UseMemoryCacheInterceptor();
options.UseDistributedCacheInterceptor();
})
.ConfigureHttpClient(opt => opt.BaseAddress = new Uri("https://targetapi.com"));Adding a MemoryCache with a DistributedCache is a perfect match and recommended way to perform the authorized requests nicely. With this configuration, the Authorization Interceptor will create a sequence with: MemoryCache > DistributedCache > AuthenticationHandler > DistributedCache > MemoryCache.
It's possible to add custom interceptors in the sequence of interceptors. Create your Interceptor class and have it inherit from the interface IAuthorizationInterceptor. After that, add it to the constructor of the Authorization Interceptor through the method UseCustomInterceptor<T>, e.g.:
services.AddHttpClient("TargetApi")
.AddAuthorizationInterceptorHandler<TargetApiAuthClass>(options =>
{
options.UseMemoryCacheInterceptor();
options.UseDistributedCacheInterceptor();
options.UseCustomInterceptor<MyCustomInterceptor>();
})
.ConfigureHttpClient(opt => opt.BaseAddress = new Uri("https://targetapi.com"));MyCustomInterceptor class:
public class MyCustomInterceptor : IAuthorizationInterceptor
{
public async Task<AuthorizationHeaders?> GetHeadersAsync(string name)
{
//Do something and return the headers if exists in this context
}
public async Task<AuthorizationHeaders?> UpdateHeadersAsync(string name, AuthorizationHeaders? expiredHeaders, AuthorizationHeaders? newHeaders)
{
//Do something with expired headers if necessary and update with newHeaders
}
}With this configuration, the Authorization Interceptor will create a sequence of: MemoryCache > DistributedCache > MyCustomInterceptor > AuthenticationHandler > DistributedCache > MyCustomInterceptor > MemoryCache.
The 'name' parameter refers to the name of the configured HttpClient. With this parameter you can differentiate between multiple httpclients configured using the same interceptor.