Question

I am uploading audio file in chunks from a Windows Phone client to an MVC3 application

I have written a Controller with an HttpPost attribute decorated Action, that is processing an incoming chunks.

The action’s signature is:

[HttpPost]
public JsonResult RecieveChunk(string id, [ModelBinder(typeof(AudioChunkModelBinder))] byte[] audio)

id in this case, is an id of a file upload session, that presumably will get negotioated by client and server before actual chunk POSTs will come pouring in.

On the Windows Phone side, an instance of HttpWebRequest is doing the upload work with no authentication currently in place.

On the server, I need to be able to know, from whom each post is coming from.

Is there a way for me to obtain a some kind of an access token from an MVC3 site to be able to POST to a site’s specific Uri, but without a need to send a user ID and a Password as a part of a Uri?

What can be an authentication approach for me in my scenario?

Answer 1

If you’re authenticating with the built-in ASP.NET / MVC authentication mechanisms, you can check the User.Identity on the server (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ewfkf772.aspx) to get information about the current user.

This assumes, of course, that you’re using the Credentials property of HttpWebRequest to persist authentication data between requests.