The Security
Assertion Markup Language (SAML) specification is an open security standard
envisioned by Organization for the
Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) Technical Committee
for the exchange of security context across service boundaries. The SAML tokens
are XML-based (can be transmitted using SOAP/HTTP) and provide a way of
implementing claims-based identity that is particularly useful in interoperable
scenarios across the identity providers and the service providers.
Following example shows how to create the SAML
security tokens using the System.IdentityModel
assembly in .NET Framework 4.0.
Create a new Visual C# Console Application project in Visual Studio
- Create a new Visual C# Console Application project in Visual Studio
- Add a reference to System.IdentityModel and System.ServiceModel assembly
- Open the Program.cs file, and
include the System.IdentityModel.Claims, System.IdentityModel.Tokens, System.ServiceModel and the System.Security.Principal
namespaces.
- Before we can create SamlSecurityToken, we need to create an
instance of the SamlAssertion object
that holds the claims information abstracted from the current windows identity.
We will write a private static method that accepts a collection of the Claim
objects and returns a SamlAssertion object.
- Note that SAML v1.1
specification puts a restriction that only resources identifiable by a named
string can be used as a SamlAttribute
value. In our example, we are using a helper method to translate SecurityIdentifier into readable NTAccount named permissions:
- Now, In main method create
instance of SamlSecurityToken using
the SamlAssertion instance returned
from the method “CreateSamlAssertionFromWindowsIdentityClaims()”.
- Now Run the program and put
debugger on token generation line to see the token.
