ASP.NET Core Identity, load user's claims when pulling a user from the database

Question

If your database context inherits from IdentityDbContext<User>, then your context gets properties like UserClaims and RoleClaims. These can be used to get (say) a user's claims as follows...

User jim = await Context.Users.SingleAsync(u => u.Name == "Jim");
List<IdentityUserClaim<string>> claims = await Context
  .UserClaims
  .Where(c => c.UserId == jim.Id)
  .ToListAsync();

However, this seems somewhat clunky. I would have expected to be able to do the following...

User jim = await Context.Users
  .Include(u => u.UserClaims)
  .SingleAsync(u => u.Name == "Jim");

However this doesn't compile. If you change it to include u.Claims then it compiles, but throws an exception... "InvalidOperationException: The expression 'u.Claims' is invalid inside an 'Include' operation, since it does not represent a property access: 't => t.MyProperty'"

Now I understand this, in that the User entity doesn't have a Claims navigation property (although I'm not sure where Intellisense picks up the Claims property), but I'm surprised that this isn't something provided when you set up Identity.

Am I missing something here, or do I have to make two database calls to get the user and claims?

Answer 1

Yes,you are right, it doesn't have navigation property by default.

You could try follow this document to add the navigation property yourself:

public class ApplicationUser : IdentityUser
{
    public virtual ICollection<IdentityUserClaim<string>> Claims { get; set; }
}

Dbcontext:

protected override void OnModelCreating(ModelBuilder modelBuilder)
    {
        base.OnModelCreating(modelBuilder);

        modelBuilder.Entity<ApplicationUser>(b =>
        {
            // Each User can have many UserClaims
            b.HasMany(e => e.Claims)
                .WithOne()
                .HasForeignKey(uc => uc.UserId)
                .IsRequired();
        });
    }