These days, most applications come with the ability to send email notifications. Sending an email in Dot Net is quite easy and can be accomplished using Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). I have used SMTP in many of my web applications, and it is still available in .Net Core.

So, why should you use MailKit? While implementing the email function in one of my .Net Core projects, I found out that Microsoft had deemed SMTP to be outdated. Instead, they recommended using the MailKit library. For more information, please check out the link below.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.net.mail.smtpclient?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-5002809&view=netcore-2.2

I have used MailKit library in my .Net Core project.

Here I will share how to use simple email sending function using MailKit library in .Net Core projects.

Implementation:

After a successful installation, we can proceed further with the code.

1. Create a configuration class.

2. Add the mail server settings in appsettings.json file, like shown below.

3. Create one email message class.

4. To encapsulate email sending functionality and to use it anywhere from the application we should create one interface and class like given below.

5. Create a new class and inherit interface.

6. The code below is an implementation in class file EmailSender. Please don’t get confused with Smtp class used below in the code; this class belongs to MailKit library class. CreateEmailMessage method is a simple message creation method which we need to use to create a message using MimeMessage class.

7. In the .Net Core project, we need to add dependency injection in Startup.cs file.

8. Now we are ready to use the send method and can call this method from anywhere in the application.

The implementation provided above is for the synchronous method. Similarly, we need to implement an asynchronous method for the send function. We can also add code to be able to send emails with attachments.

When calling the send method, we can use a string for the message body or even a dynamic template file. The BodyBuilder class can be used to build the body or content of the email. It can also be used to add data from the template file and then change the dynamic content.

I developed this in a .Net Core project, but the recommendation is to use the MailKit library in all new developments, even if the project is in the .Net framework. In older implementations, we can replace existing SMTP code with MailKit.

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The need for a directory of users arises when various devices are used on the same network. It is crucial to locate the directory on one central source, known as Active Directory. It helps validate and authenticate multiple users accessing all resources on the domain with a single sign-on.

In this blog, we will demonstrate how to implement Active Directory in a .NET application.

What is Active Directory?

Active Directory is a database adapted by Microsoft to manage multiple devices on a single network. It also can be defined as a set of services that connect users with network resources they need to accomplish projects. In order to obtain access to devices, the network users require it to be validated.

Let us consider a C# .NET application to validate the users using Active Directory on the login page, before implementing Active Directory, we use ASP.NET membership to validate a user on the Login page. The code should look similar to the code below.

Now, to create our own function to validate the user through Active Directory, we use the code below.

VerifyUserAD accepts three parameters, namely, Username, Password and ReturnMsg. ReturnMsg returns the error message if the validation of the user fails against the Active Directory. Refer to the code below.

Once the user is validated, the function VertifyUserAD returns an ‘authenticated’ message, based on which the user can take the following relevant actions.

To entirely bypass the ASP .NET membership, use the Active Directory to validate the user. For an existing application, users can maintain and access a copy of Users in the database, meaning there is no need to modify the whole application end-to-end.

Role-based implementation

For role-based implementation, we use the DirectorySearcher class to fetch the property ‘memberOf’ for that user in Active Directory, as shown in the code below.

This enables users to find the list of Groups in which the user is assigned using the SearchResult.

Use the command below to install Directory Services using the package manager console.

Install-Package System.DirectoryServices

Hope this blog will help you in the implementation of Active Directory in Dot Net application. For more information on .Net services, please visit https://development.ikf.in/metasys1/dot-net