Dan Soltesz -blog .NET geek in disguise

I ran into a issue using wcf ria services with windows authentication and getting the currently logged in users roles.  I followed the steps to enable windows authentication.

1. Change App.xaml to use Windows Authentication (By default the Silverlight Business Application template has Forms Authentication)

<Application.ApplicationLifetimeObjects>
        <app:RiaContext>
            <app:RiaContext.Authentication>
                <!--<appsvc:FormsAuthentication/>-->
                <appsvc:WindowsAuthentication/>
            </app:RiaContext.Authentication>
        </app:RiaContext>
</Application.ApplicationLifetimeObjects>

2. Change Web.config to use Windows Authentication

<!--The <authentication> section enables configuration
    of the security authentication mode used by
    ASP.NET to identify an incoming user.
-->
<authentication mode="Windows"/>

3. Load current user.  In your app.xaml.cs

 // This will automatically authenticate a user when using windows authentication
 RiaContext.Current.Authentication.LoadUser(this.Application_UserLoaded, null);

After the user loaded I then wanted to access the users AD roles. 

/// <summary>
///     Invoked when the <see cref="LoadUserOperation"/> completes. Use this
///     event handler to switch from the "loading UI" you created in
///     <see cref="InitializeRootVisual"/> to the "application UI"
/// </summary>
    private void Application_UserLoaded(LoadUserOperation operation)
        {
           foreach (var r in RiaContext.Current.User.Roles)
            {
                //do something
            }
        }

 However, RiaContext.Current.User.Roles.Count was always zero

I had missed a key step in my configuration that tells your app which role provider to use.

4.  Setup windows role provider in web.config

<roleManager enabled="true" defaultProvider="AspNetWindowsTokenRoleProvider"/>

After adding this setting to my web.config, all of my AD roles now appeared in RiaContext.Current.User.Roles