AppUser

Namespace: RA.Utilities.Authorization

The AppUser class is a strongly-typed service that simplifies access to the claims of the currently authenticated user.

🎯 Purpose

The AppUser class is a strongly-typed service designed to simplify accessing the claims of the currently authenticated user in an ASP.NET Core application.

In a typical application, retrieving user information involves injecting IHttpContextAccessor into your controllers or services and manually parsing the ClaimsPrincipal. This can be repetitive and makes unit testing difficult.

The AppUser class solves these problems by:

1. Abstracting HttpContext: It acts as a wrapper around the user's ClaimsPrincipal, providing a clean, injectable service (ICurrentUser which is implemented by AppUser) that doesn't require a direct dependency on HttpContext.
2. Simplifying Claim Access: It offers simple properties and methods to get common claims like Id, Name, and Email without needing to know the underlying claim type strings (e.g., ClaimTypes.NameIdentifier).
3. Enhancing Testability: Because it's an injectable service, you can easily mock AppUser in your unit tests to simulate various user scenarios (e.g., an authenticated user, an admin, an unauthenticated user) without needing to construct a complex HttpContext.

In short, AppUser provides a clean, reusable, and testable way to work with user identity, reducing boilerplate and improving the overall quality of your application's authorization logic.

✨ Key Benefits:

1. Simplified Access: Inject AppUser instead of IHttpContextAccessor to get user data.
2. Strongly-Typed: Provides convenient methods to get the user's ID, name, and email without manual parsing.
3. Testability: Easily mock AppUser in unit tests to simulate different user scenarios.
4. Reduced Boilerplate: Eliminates repetitive code for accessing user claims.

🚀 Usage

Step 1: Register the Service

In your Program.cs, call AddCurrentUser() to register the service.

// Program.cs
using RA.Utilities.Authorization.Extensions;

var builder = WebApplication.CreateBuilder(args);

builder.Services.AddCurrentUser();

Step 2: Inject and Use AppUser

Inject AppUser into your controllers or services to access user information.

using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Authorization;
using RA.Utilities.Authorization.Abstractions;

[ApiController]
[Route("api/[controller]")]
[Authorize]
public class ProfileController : ControllerBase
{
    private readonly ICurrentUser _currentUser;

    public ProfileController(ICurrentUser currentUser)
    {
        _currentUser = currentUser;
    }

    [HttpGet]
    public IActionResult GetUserProfile()
    {
        var userInfo = new
        {
            UserId = _currentUser.GetId<Guid>(),
            UserName = _currentUser.GetName(),
            Email = _currentUser.GetEmail(),
            IsAdmin = _currentUser.IsInRole("Admin")
        };

        return Ok(userInfo);
    }
}

API Reference

Method/Property	Return Type	Description
IsAuthenticated()	bool	Checks if the user is authenticated.
GetId<T>()	T?	Gets the user's ID (NameIdentifier claim) and converts it to the specified type (e.g., Guid, int).
GetName()	string?	Gets the user's name (Name claim).
GetEmail()	string?	Gets the user's email (Email claim).
IsInRole(string roleName)	bool	Checks if the user is a member of the specified role.
GetClaimValue(string claimType)	string?	Gets the value of the first claim with the specified type.
GetClaimValues(string claimType)	IEnumerable<string>	Gets all values for a specific claim type.
HasClaim(string claimValue)	bool	Checks if the user has a claim with the type claim and the specified value.
HasScope(string scopeValue)	bool	Checks if the user has a claim with the type scope and the specified value.