Azure Mobile Service to Mobile App Conversion Custom Authentication

Question

I have a need to move an older style Azure Mobile Service to a new Azure Subscription. In the new subscription, you are no longer allowed to create an older style Mobile Service and are required to create one of the newer Azure Mobile Apps. I have already moved the database (fixed changes with the column names, etc.), and have the easy tables and easy API migrated and working based on a NodeJS back-end. The only thing that is left is to add authentication to the mobile app to secure the back-end. The way the app was originally developed is that the mobile client SDK passed a secret key along with the endpoint URL in the MobileServiceClient constructor and a custom username/password form passed the user entered credentials to a mobile API method that would validate the user contained in the database. The updated client SDK now only accepts the endpoint URL.

Everything that I see online for the new Mobile Apps wants to authenticate with AAD, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft Account, or Google. We do not want to change our authentication. How can I easily add the same type of authentication to the new Mobile App without having to use Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc?

Answer 1

The easiest method is to implement some sort of custom authentication, just like you did in your Azure Mobile Service. The same principals apply - you submit the username / password to the backend. The backend generates a JWT and then the client submits that information for the rest of the session.

I covered Custom Auth in node early on in my blog series: https://shellmonger.com/2016/04/08/30-days-of-zumo-v2-azure-mobile-apps-day-5-custom-authentication/ - that one uses Auth0 to handle the actual user database, but the same principals apply.