title: Azure Mobile Services Authentication with Local .NET Backend
body: <p>For unimportant reasons I work mainly in an offline development environment, so it is really important to me to be able to do my development 'offline'. For this reason I am very keen on the Azure Mobile Services .NET backend project, which allows you to run your Azure Mobile Services from IIS Express locally.</p>
  
  <p>I have fought very hard to get this working, and have spent many hours trying to make this IIS service properly visible to my Android and IOS emulators (which I have finally managed to achieve).</p>
  
  <p>However, when it comes to authentication I seem to have hit a dead-end. I originally tried to implement custom authentication, which was a massive undertaking, and despite several promising leads (including an article on that very same subject published by Microsoft which could never work - very frustrating <a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/mobile-services-dotnet-backend-get-started-custom-authentication/" rel="nofollow">http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/mobile-services-dotnet-backend-get-started-custom-authentication/</a>). I drew a blank.</p>
  
  <p>In desperation I tried the more 'traditional' authentication methods (Facebook, Microsoft, Google etc) but none of them work either on the local IIS azure.</p>
  
  <p>It is beginning to dawn on me that I may have completely wasted my time. Can it be true that the local Azure Mobile project only works in some very limited scenarios.</p>
  
  <p>I would really love someone in the know to confirm what is and isn't possible with the local Azure Mobile .NET backend, as I am starting to become desperate.</p>
  
  <p>Many thanks in anticipation.</p>