Why isn't there an AuthenticationFilterAttribute class in ASP.NET Web API 2?

Question

ASP.NET Web API 2 comes with five filter interfaces:

IActionFilter
IAuthenticationFilter
IAuthorizationFilter
IExceptionFilter
IOverrideFilter

All of those interfaces have built-in implementations (e.g. ActionFilterAttribute, AuthorizationFilterAttribute), except for IAuthenticationFilter. Is there a reason for that or have Web API devs simply forgot to provide an implementation for that particular interface?

UPDATE

After reading Yishai Galatzer's answer I ended up implementing the "missing" attribute and uploaded it to Nuget.org: https://www.nuget.org/packages/WebApi.AuthenticationFilter

I assume there's no AuthenticationFilterAttribute because you can fulfill the use-case by using the AuthorizationFilterAttribute (assuming the use-case is you only "authorize" people who have authenticated) — Matthew
– Matthew, Commented May 8, 2014 at 23:52
To elaborate further, authorization is the process of granting access, authentication can then be used to determine authorization. — Matthew
– Matthew, Commented May 8, 2014 at 23:55
@Matthew The IAuthenticationFilter interface was introduced in v2 so you don't have to use an authorization filter to perform both authentication and authorization, which is indeed a good thing. What I don't quite understand is why they haven't provided an implementation for that new interface so that I can subclass it and implement my custom authentication the same way as I do for custom authorization. — Michael Benford
– Michael Benford, Commented May 9, 2014 at 0:10
@Matthew I certainly can implement IAuthenticationFilter myself and it will work just fine. But for me it would be more consistent to subclass a FilterAttribute class as it's usually done with all other filters. — Michael Benford
– Michael Benford, Commented May 9, 2014 at 0:18

Yishai Galatzer · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-09 03:22:35Z

1

Because we don't expect the common user to use an AuthenticationFilter. This is a way of not putting it front and center.

answered May 9, 2014 at 3:22

Yishai Galatzer

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