Xamarin.Auth is a cross-platform SDK for authenticating users and storing their accounts. It can be used to securely store Account objects in an account store so that applications do not always have to re-authenticate users. For information about using Xamarin.Auth to authenticate users, see Authenticating Users with an Identity Provider.

The following code example shows how an Account object is securely saved:

public void SaveCredentials (string userName, string password)
{
  if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace (userName) && !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace (password)) {
    Account account = new Account {
      Username = userName
    };
    account.Properties.Add ("Password", password);
    AccountStore.Create ().Save (account, App.AppName);
  }
}

Saved accounts are uniquely identified using a key composed of the account's Username property and a service ID, which is a string that's used when fetching accounts from the account store. The user's password is stored in the Account.Properties collection, which is a key-value store whose values are encrypted when the Account instance is stored.

If an Account was previously saved, calling the Save method again will overwrite it.

Account objects can be retrieved by calling the FindAccountsForService method, as shown in the following code example:

public string UserName {
  get {
    var account = AccountStore.Create ().FindAccountsForService (App.AppName).FirstOrDefault ();
    return (account != null) ? account.Username : null;
  }
}

public string Password {
  get {
    var account = AccountStore.Create ().FindAccountsForService (App.AppName).FirstOrDefault ();
    return (account != null) ? account.Properties ["Password"] : null;
  }
}

The FindAccountsForService method returns an IEnumerable collection of Account objects, with the first item in the collection being set as the matched account.

Account objects can be deleted by calling the Delete method, as shown in the following code example:

public void DeleteCredentials ()
{
  var account = AccountStore.Create ().FindAccountsForService (App.AppName).FirstOrDefault ();
  if (account != null) {
    AccountStore.Create ().Delete (account, App.AppName);
  }
}

This recipe showed how to use Xamarin.Auth to securely store data in an account store that's backed by Keychain services in iOS, and the KeyStore class in Android.