Outdated documentation and samples

[Al4ric]

This looks like really promising framework. Lot's of great tools. New template wizard is great. Idea behind "uno-check" tool is fantastic. The tool itself works amazing.

However very outdated documentation and examples makes this thing worthless for me. Most of the samples from github don't even build.

I have very small "test" application that I start to develop in Maui with Blazor. I have working Web API and Auth0 authentication. So, when I heard about this, I immediately jumped into it. But after struggling for a month, I'm not even able to get authentication to work here. For a project that advertises that you can start to work on multiplatform in days - it fails miserably. Copying examples from documentation is simply not working. Searching in github repo also brings no results.

I'm sure that company behind this created many successful implementation for their clients. But for any developer that would want to pick it up and develop - I don't think it is ready. Maybe for some small self-contained apps without any backend it can work. But for application requiring authentication, authorization web api and user management in any other place that self-build database - this is a no-go.

Probably we could manually take care of creating manual management of HttpClient with tokens and what-not. But this defeats the purpose of whole "Uno.Extensions.Http.*" nugets. They simply do not work and there is no examples or community big enough to make it work.

If this framework would work as advertised, I would be happy to even pay for support (although 40 USD seems a bit steep for support and visual editor, especially with tools such as Github Copilot costing 10 USD or 20 USD for whole Cursor AI).

[christallire]

I think coding agent can quickly identify and fix this issues

[Al4ric]

That is another issue. I have provided documentation and gave coding agents access to web. And all of them (ChatGPT O3, Gemini 2.5 Pro, Claude Sonnet 4) tried for several hours and could not produce working solution. I tried guiding them tried multiple times with multiple models. Tried with agents, tried with asking - they are not able to figure it out. And the only time they were getting close to making working solution is when they re-implemented everything that "Uno.Extensions.*" offered making all those extensions pointless (and also adding around 20-25 new files to my existing solution). And tbh. my current solution in Maui with Blazor embedded was much smaller and much more elegant than this. :(

[MartinZikmund]

@Al4ric Thank you for the honest feedback, that is always the most valuable, as we definitely want to make sure to remove all these papercuts for people starting with Uno Platform. I will forward this to our team to investigate further - would you be willing to share some more details on your requirements if needed?

CC @Jen-Uno

[Al4ric]

Absolutely. Just let me know what is needed.

[Jen-Uno]

@Al4ric thank you for taking the time to send some feedback! I am currently looking into how we can improve the documentation and any comments or ideas you have are more than welcome!

I will add your current feedback and ensure that the painpoints you raised are addressed. We definitely want first-time users to have an excellent experience, so if we are falling short on that, we want to improve.

Feel free to add your comments here, or if you prefer, we can also have a quick teams meeting where you can walk us through the issues.

[Al4ric]

More details can be found here:
unoplatform/uno.extensions#2833

If you need some more please let me know.

[francoistanguay]

Hi @Al4ric ,

We'll definitely review docs to make sure they're aligned with latest additions to Http and others.

In the meantime, here's an example of how Auth and Http (using Kiota) get boostrapped in an Uno app: https://github.com/unoplatform/uno.chefs/blob/main/Chefs/App.xaml.host.cs

And here's maybe some additional info on Auth0 + OIDC using Uno: https://community.auth0.com/t/how-to-use-auth0-with-uno-platform/127572/5

If Auth doesn't work, can you please share an example of how you're using our Extensions? What error you're getting? A sample repro project?

Thank you

[Al4ric]

That is one of the issues. I'm not getting anything. But let's start with a setup. First in my "original" application with Maui and embedded Blazor I'm using Auth0 nuget package for Maui. When I call "LoginAsync" method it opens local Web browser (either on Android or in Windows) with Auth0 landing page when I can login or register. After that is done - in application I have access to bearer token and refresh token (that I need to manually add and maintain).

But in my Uno App here is what I ended up with. After many struggles, I added to App.xaml.cs file following lines:

.UseHttp((context, services) => { services.AddRefitClient<IMyRefitApi>(context); }) .UseAuthentication(builder => { builder.AddOidc(); })

And I needed to add to appsettings this:

"Oidc": { "Authority": "https://mycompany.eu.auth0.com", "ClientId": "proper_client_id", "Scope": "openid profile email api offline_access", "RedirectUri": "myapp://callback/" }
As well as this:
"MyRefitApi": { "Url": "https://octome-v2.onrender.com", "UseNativeHandler": true }

Since I could not find any way to provide it programmatically (and that is another issue - I cannot find in documentation any detailed explanation how to use those sections and what can be provided in them).

Next in my MainModel.cs I have injected:
private IAuthenticationService _authenticationService;

and tried to call this:
var test = await _authenticationService.LoginAsync();

In desktop app this call simply executes (I have put this in try-catch) without any exception and sets value "test" to "false". On Android Emulator, it starts to execute this and never finishes. In desktop app after this call I tried to call my API, and not-protected endpoints works fine, protected ones throw exceptions with 401 status code.

I have noticed that this login method accepts credentials as dictionary, so I modified it later with this:

try { var credentials = new Dictionary<string, string> { {"correct_login", "correct_password"} }; var test = await _authenticationService.LoginAsync(credentials); } catch (Exception e) { Console.WriteLine(e); throw; }

And still same behavior - in windows returns with "false", in Android Emulator it never finishes.

[kazo0]

@Al4ric For the changes you needed to make in your App.xaml.cs file and the appsettings.json, this is all clearly documented.

UseHttp and AddRefitClient

• You have indeed found an issue in the docs! The UseHttpRefit/Kiota methods are not correct, it should just be UseHttp. and it does look like there is an outdated code snippet for the AddRefitClient. I will follow up with docs changes in a new PR linked to your issue here: Refit documentation is outdated uno.extensions#2833
• Steps to add UseHttp: Step 1 and Step 2

UseAuthentication / AddOidc

• Steps to follow for adding the UseAutentication method: Step 1 and Step 2
• Note the second bullet point in Step 2 linked above that demonstrates the usage of AddOidc
• There is also an article dedicated entirely to setting up Auth Extensions including invoking the IAuthenticationService and registering the HTTP Endpoints: https://platform.uno/docs/articles/external/uno.extensions/doc/Learn/Authentication/HowTo-Authentication.html
• The Auth Extensions should take care of the authorization of API calls once you are authenticated. As described here

AppSettings.json and/or programmatic configuration

• Step to configure the endpoint both programmatically and using appsettings.json: Addressed both in the 3rd Step of the overall How-To: Get Started with Http AND in the separate docs specific for Refit at Step 5
• A breakdown of what is valid for the endpoint options in the appsettings.json is found here
• A breakdown of valid options of the OIDC appsettings.json section
• Note the last part of the OIDC configuration section linked above specifically mentions the availability of an ConfigureOidcClientOptions() extension method that provides access to the external class of OidcClientOptions from IdentityModel.OidcClient. There should be documentation from Duende directly for their classes as well as existing repositories of usages for that class.

There are also existing sample apps that are referenced throughout the documentation links provided above, although those samples may need to be updated as they may be old. Sample repository can be found here: https://github.com/unoplatform/Uno.Samples

All of the relevant code is also open-source and available to inspect on the Uno Extensions Repository. More specifically the OIDC code can be found here: https://github.com/unoplatform/uno.extensions/tree/main/src/Uno.Extensions.Authentication.Oidc and the Http code can be found here, here, and here

As well as usages of the relevant code in the TestHarness app within the Extensions repo

All documentation for these articles linked are also available on the repository for Extensions here. They even include guidance in the README for how to contribute and test docs changes locally.

If there are anymore gaps in the documentation, I invite you to contribute to the repository and/or open issues relating to that on the Extensions repo directly.

Now, as for the LoginAsync issues, this warrants a separate issue opened on the Extensions repo and you can attach a .zip of an app that is reproducing your issue so we can better diagnose the problem

I appreciate the detailed feedback and hope some of the questions have been answered here!

[Al4ric]

One more thing: I just noticed this that although this method did not throw exception something was logged on console:
fail: Uno.Extensions.Authentication.Oidc.OidcAuthenticationProvider[0]
Error logging in: System.NotImplementedException: The method or operation is not implemented.
at Uno.AuthenticationBroker.WebAuthenticationBrokerProvider.AuthenticateAsyncCore(WebAuthenticationOptions options, Uri requestUri, Uri callbackUri, CancellationToken ct) in C:\a\1\s\src\Uno.UWP\Security\Authentication\Web\WebAuthenticationBrokerProvider.skia.cs:line 23
at Uno.AuthenticationBroker.WebAuthenticationBrokerProvider.AuthenticateAsync(WebAuthenticationOptions options, Uri requestUri, Uri callbackUri, CancellationToken ct) in C:\a\1\s\src\Uno.UWP\Security\Authentication\Web\WebAuthenticationBrokerProvider.cs:line 66
at Windows.Foundation.AsyncOperation1.BuildTaskAsync(FuncAsync2 taskBuilder) in C:\a\1\s\src\Uno.Foundation\Internal\AsyncOperation.TResult.cs:line 70
at System.WindowsRuntimeSystemExtensions.AsTaskCore[TResult](IAsyncOperation`1 source, CancellationToken ct) in C:\a\1\s\src\Uno.UWP\System.Runtime\WindowsRuntimeSystemExtensions.cs:line 66
at Uno.Extensions.Authentication.Oidc.WebAuthenticatorBrowser.InvokeAsync(BrowserOptions options, CancellationToken cancellationToken) - (null)

So:

1. It is strange that exception is caught and silenced
2. I have just checked documentation if I was supposed to provide any implementation of this WebAuthenticationProvider and OIDC page is not saying anything about this but here:
   https://platform.uno/docs/articles/features/web-authentication-broker.html

it mentions this only as optional: "For special needs, it is possible to create a custom implementation of the Web Authentication Broker by using the [ApiExtension] mechanism of Uno and implementing the IWebAuthenticationBrokerProvider interface" and also confirms my previous assumption: "The default implementation of the WebAuthenticationBroker on Android will launch the system browser and the result will come back through the custom scheme of the Return Uri."