Authenticate SharePoint Requirements on iPhone

Question

I created a simple SharePoint client application for iPhone that requires access to some SharePoint web services (mainly /_vti_bin/Lists.asmx). It’s hard for me to figure out how to do this in a new SharePoint environment like Office365.

In the old forms-based BPOS, I was able to authenticate these services simply by using the didReceiveAuthenticationChallenge method;

 -(void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveAuthenticationChallenge:(NSURLAuthenticationChallenge *)challenge { NSURLCredential *newCredential = [NSURLCredential credentialWithUser:username password:password persistence:NSURLCredentialPersistenceForSession]; [[challenge sender] useCredential:newCredential forAuthenticationChallenge:challenge]; } 

This obviously didn't work anymore with SharePoint sites that have claims authentication, so I did some research and found out that I needed a FedAuth cookie that should be attached to the request.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh147177.aspx

According to this article, with .NET Apps, it seems possible to get these HTTPOnly FedAuth cookies using WININET.dll, but I suppose it's not available on iPhone?

Then I saw a SharePlus application representing UIWebView , and asking the user to log into their Office365 account first on the browser screen (which is the same concept as in the “Enabling the user for remote authentication” section in the article above).

So, I tried to figure out if I could somehow access these FedAuth by logging into my Office365 account via UIWebView , but [[NSHTTPCookieStorage sharedHTTPCookieStorage] cookies] did not allow me to access HTTPOnly cookies.

Is there a way to get claims authentication in iPhone applications without requiring a designated intermediate .NET service to handle authentication, or requiring the user to disable the HTTPOnly property on these cookies?

Sorry, I'm very new to SharePoint, so I may not even look in the right direction, but I would appreciate any advice on getting claims authentication for working with iPhone applications. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I figured it out myself. I had to laugh at my own stupidity and impatience.

First of all, [[NSHTTPCookieStorage sharedHTTPCookieStorage] cookies] DO allows you to access HTTPOnly cookies. Although, when a user logs in to Office 365 UIWebView delegate method, (void)webViewDidFinishLoad:(UIWebView *)webView is called several times, so you just need to wait until FedAuth appears in the cookie jar.

Here is my implementation of (void)webViewDidFinishLoad:(UIWebView *)webView ;

 - (void)webViewDidFinishLoad:(UIWebView *)webView { NSHTTPCookieStorage *storage = [NSHTTPCookieStorage sharedHTTPCookieStorage]; NSArray *cookiesArray = [storage cookies]; for (NSHTTPCookie *cookie in cookiesArray) { if ([[cookie name] isEqualToString:@"FedAuth"]) { /*** DO WHATEVER YOU WANT WITH THE COOKIE ***/ break; } } } 

Once you get the cookie, you just need to add it to NSURLRequest using the (void)setAllHTTPHeaderFields:(NSDictionary *)headerFields when calling the SharePoint web services.

Hope this helps someone.