Integrating 2 different user dbs into a single ASP.NET MVC membersip provider?

Question

I'm working on a project that needs to authenticate users based on records in two different databases. All administrators are stored locally and require full functionality to manage their accounts (reset password, etc). Regular users are authenticated against a different database used by another web app, so I only need to check that their credentials are correct.

After entering their username/pass at the logon screen, my app should check if they exist in the local admins table. If so, they are given the role of 'admin' and allowed access. If not, it should then check the other app's user table and give them a 'user' role if successful.

The project is basically a large online book. Users simply need authentication to view it, rate the sections, and bookmark pages. The rating/bookmark data will be associated with their unique id. All user management is handled in the external app. Admins, however, will only be able to view/edit the pages and will NOT be rating/bookmarking things. Their accounts will be managed with this admin area.

What is the best way to accomplish this in a .NET MVC application? By 'this', I mean integrating the logon/authentication system with both and assigning them a role based on which database confirms their credentials.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

MVC really doesn't have much to do with your user validation logic - you'll need to implement a custom membership provider to handle connecting to both databases and performing the validation. This membership class could be ported to any application though, it's not specific to MVC.

Once you've got your logic in your custom membership provider, you just need to use FormsAuthentication with your MVC app, of which there are lots of tutorials around, here's a quick one.

The only tip that I would add that pertains to MVC is that you should try to keep your logic for view decisions in your controllers. It's tempting to put something like "<% if user == admin then renderPartial(this) else renderPartial(that) %>" in your View, but that violates MVC principles in my opinion. Much better to use ViewModels or populate ViewData in your controller.