ASP.NET MVC: How to find Controllers with [Authorize] attributes using Reflection in C#? (or How to build Dynamic Site.Master Menus?)

Question

Maybe I should back-up and widen the scope before diving into the title question...

I'm currently writing a web app in ASP.NET MVC 1.0 (although I do have MVC 2.0 installed on my PC, so I'm not exactly restricted to 1.0) -- I've started with the standard MVC project which has your basic "Welcome to ASP.NET MVC" and shows both the [Home] tab and [About] tab in the upper-right corner. Pretty standard, right?

I've added 4 new Controller classes, let's call them "Astronomer", "Biologist", "Chemist", and "Physicist". Attached to each new controller class is the [Authorize] attribute.

For example, for the BiologistController.cs

[Authorize(Roles = "Biologist,Admin")]
public class BiologistController : Controller
{ 
    public ActionResult Index() { return View(); }
}

These [Authorize] tags naturally limit which user can access different controllers depending on Roles, but I want to dynamically build a Menu at the top of my website in the Site.Master Page based on the Roles the user is a part of. So for example, if "JoeUser" was a member of Roles "Astronomer" and "Physicist", the navigation menu would say:

[Home] [Astronomer] [Physicist] [About]

And naturally, it would not list links to "Biologist" or "Chemist" controller Index page.

Or if "JohnAdmin" was a member of Role "Admin", links to all 4 controllers would show up in the navigation bar.

Ok, you prolly get the idea... Now for the real question...

---

Starting with the answer from this StackOverflow topic about Dynamic Menu building in ASP.NET, I'm trying to understand how I would fully implement this. (I'm a newbie and need a little more guidance, so please bare with me.)

The answer proposes Extending the Controller class (call it "ExtController") and then have each new WhateverController inherit from ExtController.

My conclusion is that I would need to use Reflection in this ExtController Constructor to determine which Classes and Methods have [Authorize] attributes attached to them to determine the Roles. Then using a Static Dictionary, store the Roles and Controllers/Methods in key-value pairs.

I imagine it something like this:

public class ExtController : Controller
{
    protected static Dictionary<Type,List<string>> ControllerRolesDictionary;

    protected override void OnActionExecuted(ActionExecutedContext filterContext)   
    {   
        // build list of menu items based on user's permissions, and add it to ViewData  
        IEnumerable<MenuItem> menu = BuildMenu();  
        ViewData["Menu"] = menu;
    }

    private IEnumerable<MenuItem> BuildMenu()
    {
        // Code to build a menu
        SomeRoleProvider rp = new SomeRoleProvider();
        foreach (var role in rp.GetRolesForUser(HttpContext.User.Identity.Name))
        {

        }
    }

    public ExtController()
    {
        // Use this.GetType() to determine if this Controller is already in the Dictionary
        if (!ControllerRolesDictionary.ContainsKey(this.GetType()))
        {
            // If not, use Reflection to add List of Roles to Dictionary 
            // associating with Controller
        }
    }
}

Is this doable? If so, how do I perform Reflection in the ExtController constructor to discover the [Authorize] attribute and related Roles (if any)

ALSO! Feel free to go out-of-scope on this question and suggest an alternate way of solving this "Dynamic Site.Master Menu based on Roles" problem. I'm the first to admit that this may not be the best approach.

EDIT

After much reading and experimenting, I came up with my own solution. See below for my answer. Any constructive feedback / criticism welcome!

Answer 1

I prefer linking to everything in my Menus and creating a HtmlHelper which checks to see if a link is accessible or not based on the [Authorize] attributes.

Answer 2

Ok, so I decided to flesh out my own Extended Controller class like I originally proposed. Here is a very basic version. I can see various ways of making this better (extending further, tightening up the code, etc.) but I thought I would offer up my basic results because I imagine there are plenty of other people that want something similar, but might not want all the extras.

public abstract class ExtController : Controller
{
    protected static Dictionary<string, List<string>> RolesControllerDictionary;
    protected override void OnActionExecuted(ActionExecutedContext filterContext)   
    {   
        // build list of menu items based on user's permissions, and add it to ViewData  
        IEnumerable<MenuItem> menu = BuildMenu();  
        ViewData["Menu"] = menu;
    }

    private IEnumerable<MenuItem> BuildMenu()
    {
        // Code to build a menu
        var dynamicMenu = new List<MenuItem>();
        SomeRoleProvider rp = new SomeRoleProvider();
        // ^^^^^INSERT DESIRED ROLE PROVIDER HERE^^^^^
        rp.Initialize("", new NameValueCollection());
        try
        {   // Get all roles for user from RoleProvider
            foreach (var role in rp.GetRolesForUser(HttpContext.User.Identity.Name))
            {   // Check if role is in dictionary
                if (RolesControllerDictionary.Keys.Contains(role))
                {   
                    var controllerList = RolesControllerDictionary[role];
                    foreach (var controller in controllerList)
                    {   // Add controller to menu only if it is not already added
                        if (dynamicMenu.Any(x => x.Text == controller))
                        { continue; }
                        else
                        { dynamicMenu.Add(new MenuItem(controller)); }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        catch { }   // Most role providers can throw exceptions. Insert Log4NET or equiv here.   
        return dynamicMenu; 
    }

    public ExtController()
    {
        // Check if ControllerRolesDictionary is non-existant
        if (RolesControllerDictionary == null)
        {
            RolesControllerDictionary = new Dictionary<string, List<string>>();
            // If so, use Reflection to add List of all Roles associated with Controllers
            const bool allInherited = true;
            const string CONTROLLER = "Controller";
            var myAssembly = System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();

            // get List of all Controllers with [Authorize] attribute
            var controllerList = from type in myAssembly.GetTypes()
                                 where type.Name.Contains(CONTROLLER)
                                 where !type.IsAbstract
                                 let attribs = type.GetCustomAttributes(allInherited)
                                 where attribs.Any(x => x.GetType().Equals(typeof(AuthorizeAttribute)))
                                 select type;
            // Loop over all controllers
            foreach (var controller in controllerList)
            {   // Find first instance of [Authorize] attribute
                var attrib = controller.GetCustomAttributes(allInherited).First(x => x.GetType().Equals(typeof(AuthorizeAttribute))) as AuthorizeAttribute;
                foreach (var role in attrib.Roles.Split(',').AsEnumerable())
                {   // If there are Roles associated with [Authorize] iterate over them
                    if (!RolesControllerDictionary.ContainsKey(role))
                    { RolesControllerDictionary[role] = new List<string>(); }
                    // Add controller to List of controllers associated with role (removing "controller" from name)
                    RolesControllerDictionary[role].Add(controller.Name.Replace(CONTROLLER,""));
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

To use, just:

• Add the [Authorize(Roles="SomeRole1,SomeRole2,SomeRole3,etc."] to the Controller Class
• Replace the inherited "Controller" with "ExtController".

For example:

[Authorize(Roles = "Biologist,Admin")]
public class BiologistController : ExtController
{
    public ActionResult Index()
    { return View(); }
}

If you don't replace "Controller" with "ExtController", then that Controller won't have a dynamic menu. (This could be useful, in some scenarios, I think...)

In my Site.Master file, I changed the "menu" section to look like this:

<ul id="menu">              
    <li><%= Html.ActionLink("Home", "Index", "Home")%></li>
    <%  if (ViewData.Keys.Contains("Menu"))
        {
          foreach (MenuItem menu in (IEnumerable<MenuItem>)ViewData["Menu"])
          { %>
    <li><%= Html.ActionLink(menu.Text, "Index", menu.Text)%></li>           
     <%   } 
        }   
     %>       
    <li><%= Html.ActionLink("About", "About", "Home")%></li>
</ul>

And that's it! :-)