Integrating services like Microsoft Account, Google Account, Facebook, Twitter etc. in our apps undoubtedly provides several benefits, one of which is that we can use them as an account system for our app. From the developers’ point of view, it means not bothering with creating interfaces and functionalities for user profile creation – modification, not needing to mess with usernames and passwords, and also bypassing the secure storage of this information. From the users’ point of view, it means s/he won’t need to create an account for yet another app (which is a very good thing by the way, since users usually dislike creating accounts).
To integrate Microsoft Account, we will use Live SDK, which makes it very easy to use several Microsoft services such as SkyDrive, Outlook and Skype. Live SDK is available not only for Windows 8 and Windows Phone, but also for Android and iOS.
In this article, we will create an app that allows the user to sign in with a Microsoft account, displays the user’s name, and makes the user stay signed in until s/he wants to sign out (meaning the user won’t need to sign in everytime the app is opened).
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