At MIX, Caleb did a talk about the new Silverlight/WIF integration classes that “ship” with the latest identity training kit. Since this is a topic that comes up really frequently – I had a first look.

The integration code consists of two projects (client & server side plumbing) and can be divided into several feature areas. I will post more information on the corresponding areas when I have written more code against them.

Same claims programming model as in WIF
The integration code includes (I)ClaimsPrincipal, (I)ClaimsIdentity, Claim, ClaimCollection as well as the standard claim types.

WS-Trust and WS-Security support
This is my favourite feature! The WSTrustClient class allows requesting tokens from WS-Trust 1.3 endpoints. It supports Username/Password and Windows credentials as well as bearer and symmetric token types. The IssuedTokenHeader class makes it easier to embed the requested token in calls to backend services. The TokenCache class allows caching RSTRs to be used with the issued token header.

Bringing claims to a Silverlight UI
Another feature area deals with bringing claims into the SL UI for personalization and authorization purposes. This needs some server side plumbing (the AuthenticationService) and seems to focus on passive scenarios. The current implementation simply mirrors the user claims that are visible in the app/service backend back to the UI.

Silverlight integration
This part of the integration code makes logons and claims access more SLish by providing an SL appplication service and thus data binding access to claims.

HTH