Geotopia: additional features and sending emails

In the last blog I explained how to use Windows Azure Active Directory and Windows Azure Caching Service. This blog post will dive a bit deeper in these concepts but also adds SendGrid to the solution in order to send emails to users with their temporary password.

The WebAPI Controller will perform the following steps:

1. Create a user in WAAD by using Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ActiveDirectory.GraphHelper. The following snippets achieves this goal. It also creates some temporary password based on a Guid.

Note: your tenant ID can be found on the Windows Azure portal. Go to your application in the directory screen on the portal. Click View Endpoints and you will see a list of endpoints. When you have a look at your OAuth 2.0 token endpoint you will see the URL in following shape:

https://login.windows.net//oauth2/token?api-version=1.0

//add to to Windows Azure Active Directory
            string clientId = CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting("ClientId").ToString();
            string password = CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting("ClientPassword").ToString();
            // get a token using the helper
            AADJWTToken token = DirectoryDataServiceAuthorizationHelper.GetAuthorizationToken("", clientId, password);
            // initialize a graphService instance using the token acquired from previous step
            DirectoryDataService graphService = new DirectoryDataService("", token);

            User newWAADUser = new Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ActiveDirectory.User();
            newWAADUser.accountEnabled = true;
            newWAADUser.displayName = user.UserName;
            newWAADUser.mailNickname = user.UserName;
            PasswordProfile pwdProfile = new PasswordProfile();
            pwdProfile.forceChangePasswordNextLogin = true;
            pwdProfile.password = Guid.NewGuid().ToString("N").Substring(1, 10) + "!";
            newWAADUser.userPrincipalName = user.UserName + "@geotopia.onmicrosoft.com";
            newWAADUser.passwordProfile = pwdProfile;
            graphService.AddTousers(newWAADUser);
            var response = graphService.SaveChanges();

I registered "FirstUser" as being the user with an emailaddress I own. As you can see in the next figure, the user is added to the Windows Azure Active Directory.

2. An email is sent to the user with his/her temporary password which is generated in step 1. For sending emails, I use the Windows Azure add-on SendGrid which can be easily configured.

//send email to user by using SendGrid
            SendGrid myMessage = SendGrid.GetInstance();
            myMessage.AddTo(user.EmailAddress);
            myMessage.From = new MailAddress("info@geotopia.com", "Geotopia Administrator");
            myMessage.Subject = "Attention: Your temporary password for Geotopia";
            myMessage.Text = "Your username on Geotopia is:" + user.UserName + "\n\r";
            myMessage.Text += "Temporary password:" + pwdProfile.password + "\n\r";
            myMessage.Text += "\n\r";
            myMessage.Text += "The first time you sign in with your temporary password, you need to change it.";

            // Create credentials, specifying your user name and password.
            var credentials = new NetworkCredential("", "");

            // Create an SMTP transport for sending email.
            var transportSMTP = SMTP.GetInstance(credentials);

            // Send the email.
            transportSMTP.Deliver(myMessage);

After this, I get an email!

3. The user is added to the neo4j graph db. This snippet is already shown in the previous blog post.
4. Add the user to the Windows Azure Cache. This snippets is also shown in the previous blog post.

So, with everything in place now I finalize the search window on geotopia to look for users and start following them. I will blog about this feature in the next few days....

Happy coding!