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Can somebody explain the connection between Identity and IdentityServer?

There was a recent article that says there will be a new version of IdentityServer (ie IdentityServer 4).

I'm doing a ASP.NET 5 project. I only heard of Identity 3 before and I'm planning to use it.

Can I use Identity 3 in my project without using this IdentityServer?

raberana
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1 Answers1

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Can somebody explain the connection between Identity and IdentityServer?

There's no direct connection: ASP.NET Identity is a membership provider (i.e a way to manage your users) while IdentityServer is an OAuth2/OpenID Connect server you can use to support token authentication.

That said, IdentityServer4 will eventually support ASP.NET Identity 3 as a membership store.

Can I use Identity 3 in my project without using this IdentityServer?

Sure, you can use ASP.NET Identity without IdentityServer (and vice versa).

Kévin Chalet
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  • but cant Identity support tokens? – raberana Feb 05 '16 at 14:13
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    Not natively. Unlike Katana, ASP.NET 5/Core doesn't have an authorization server middleware you can use to add token support to ASP.NET Identity. You can read http://stackoverflow.com/a/30788109/542757 for more information. – Kévin Chalet Feb 05 '16 at 14:17
  • what is ur mean in this sentence :`IdentityServer4 will eventually support ASP.NET Identity 3 as a membership store`, can u expalin more plz? – pmn Feb 17 '17 at 05:19
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    @pejman it means Identity Server 4 will add (and it is in fact already done) support for using ASP.NET Identity for managing user accounts. The bare IdentityServer4 package is a framework for issuing and validating OAuth2/OpenID Connect tokens. It does not come with API or UI for managing user accounts. ASP.NET Identity however, is an API and UI for managing user accounts. You can quite easily plug ASP.NET Identity into your Identity Server. An integration is already implemented: https://github.com/IdentityServer/IdentityServer4.AspNetIdentity – henningst Feb 27 '17 at 09:04