Oleg Sych

Build 8.12.27.1 of T4 Toolbox includes a new project item template for an AzMan authorization policy XML file and a code generator that produces a C# wrapper for performing operation-based authorization checks against it. The generator creates a separate enumerated type with security operations for each application application in the AzMan policy and a wrapper class with strongly-typed Authorize and CanPerform methods that take these enums as parameters.

This article provides a brief overview of AzMan and demonstrates how several existing APIs can be used to perform authorization checks in .NET applications. It then discusses shortcomings of the current APIs and demonstrates how T4 templates can be used to generate a set of C# classes and enumerations that wrap AzMan COM API and allow application developers to write strongly-typed authorization code.