Azure Mobile Services custom authentication with MVC5 - asp.net-mvc-5

Question

I've successfully setup a custom authentication process with Azure Mobile Services and my Windows Phone 8.1 app (following the guide here)
I'm now creating an MVC5 single page application (SPA) to manage the admin side of things for the system. I'm relatively new to MVC5 and just need a little help to get started with performing a login just like in my phone app?
Currently my phone app performs a login by
App.MobileService.CurrentUser = await AuthenticateAsync(this.textBox_email.Text, textBox_password.Password);
which does
private async Task<MobileServiceUser> AuthenticateAsync(string username, string password)
{
// Call the CustomLogin API and set the returned MobileServiceUser
// as the current user.
var user = await App.MobileService
.InvokeApiAsync<LoginRequest, MobileServiceUser>(
"CustomLogin", new LoginRequest()
{
UserName = username,
Password = password
});
return user;
}
this all works well so I guess the question is how do I do make a call to my customer authentication API in the same way in MVC5 and set the user context if successful?
Startup.Auth.cs:
public partial class Startup
{
public void ConfigureAuth(IAppBuilder app)
{
// Enable the application to use a cookie to store information for the signed in user
app.UseCookieAuthentication(new CookieAuthenticationOptions
{
AuthenticationType = DefaultAuthenticationTypes.ApplicationCookie,
LoginPath = new PathString("/Account/Login")
});
// Use a cookie to temporarily store information about a user logging in with a third party login provider
app.UseExternalSignInCookie(DefaultAuthenticationTypes.ExternalCookie);
// Uncomment the following lines to enable logging in with third party login providers
//app.UseMicrosoftAccountAuthentication(
// clientId: "",
// clientSecret: "");
//app.UseTwitterAuthentication(
// consumerKey: "",
// consumerSecret: "");
//app.UseFacebookAuthentication(
// appId: "",
// appSecret: "");
//app.UseGoogleAuthentication();
}
Let me know if I'm missing any info or detail.
Thanks!

Answer 1

Unfortunately this is not easy to do in Mobile Services. While you could achieve login using the Mobile Services HTML/JS SDK (served in an MVC view), this will not set the user context.
Because of Mobile Services incompatibility with MVC (addressed in the new Mobile Apps product), you won't be able to rely on that SDK. Unfortunately that means writing custom middleware/filters.
The easiest solution is probably to package your username/password validation and storage logic into code that can be shared by your Mobile Services project and your MVC project. The MVC project would need to take the validated user and issue a session cookie which is then read by a custom middleware or filter.
Writing an AuthorizationFilter implementation will be much easier than an OWIN middleware, so I would recommend that approach. Check if the cookie is present and valid, and if so set the user context.