Easy Auth /.auth/login/ routes support for local development

[JasonKleban]

I don't think it's too early to ask for another update on this topic with a fresh issue.

• PR from 2018 https://github.com/Azure/azure-functions-core-tools/pull/789 worked on a bunch and then closed without much explanation.

• Issue from nearly two years ago https://github.com/Azure/azure-functions-core-tools/issues/1371 closed with "Closing this issue, please follow the PR as we will provide the updates there as we make progress" which wasn't followed.

• Related issue for static-web-apps https://github.com/Azure/static-web-apps/issues/237 "month or two" away 8 months ago - and unclear to me if this actually shipped or if it was just closed like the others.

I'm paying hundreds of dollars a month to use Azure Cloud services, but the inability to locally debug functions with dependencies on other azure services without local emulators - such as Cognitive Search and Azure AD through Graph API - are making it impractically slow to deliver our solutions and grow our Azure infrastructure footprint.

[apawast]

@JasonKleban this is not actively being worked on as this is lower in priority. However, it is on our backlog for further discussion.

[santoshinim]

Hello, I am completely stuck with the issue mentioned in https://github.com/Azure/azure-functions-core-tools/pull/789, what alternative or work around we have at the moment for simulating authentication with Node JS Azure function in VS code locally ?

[soninaren]

cc: @ConnorMcMahon

[fabiocav]

@ConnorMcMahon do we have an issue tracking the Easy Auth work to support local dev?

[liliankasem]

@davidmrdavid Could you maybe help with this?

[fabiocav]

@apawast do you have any guidance on how to proceed here? We would need some assistance before committing to this.

[davidmrdavid]

My apologies, I did not see that I was tagged on this thread. I'll be following up internally to engage the right folks

[soninaren]

@davidmrdavid Can you share an update if there was any from the internal discussions?

[davidmrdavid]

@soninaren: I did follow-up internally and notified EasyAuth owners. Other than that, I don't know if they have any updates. I'll ping them again.

[liliankasem]

@davidmrdavid any news? 😄

[davidmrdavid]

@liliankasem: no luck, and unfortunately I don't own this feature. Let me reach out internally to you about this.

[annzho]

I believe the work for the EasyAuth Local Dev PR https://github.com/Azure/azure-functions-core-tools/pull/789 was abandoned. Maybe @glennamanns can confirm?

[liliankasem]

I reached out to Glenna about this: the PR was dependent on an EasyAuth refactor what was only available on Linux (this was ~2-3 years ago) and our team was concerned about taking a dependency on dotnet - which is no longer a concern now considering how much things have changed :)

Glenna also confirmed that her PR did work; it would probably be difficult to rebase but we could start over and use her old PR as a guide.

@fabiocav @annzho - I don't see any reason we shouldn't give this another shot, thoughts?

[fabiocav]

@mattchenderson can we discuss this? It would be good to understand if this is something we should consider and identify blockers. Thanks!

[anthonychu]

Also take a look at Azure Static Web Apps CLI. We took a different approach there as we found that most customers don't need (or want) to set up a real identity provider locally. What they really wanted was to be able to test authenticated code paths easily, meaning having the /.auth routes available, making it easy to impersonate a user and set claims, and have those flow correctly as headers to the function app. The CLI provides an auth screen at the /.auth/login/* endpoints that allows you to enter the user id and claims you want to "log in" as.

Functions supports full EasyAuth, which includes client flow using SDKs. So I'm not sure if the same solution applies here.