Authorization in ASP.NET MVC 2 using web.config file

Question

Hi,
I have an ASP.MVC 2 web page and I have my authentication done like this:

FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie(user.UserName, false);
FormsAuthenticationTicket authTicket = new FormsAuthenticationTicket(1, "fooPage" + user.UserName, DateTime.Now, DateTime.Now.AddMinutes(10), false, String.Empty);

HttpCookie cookie = new HttpCookie(FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName, FormsAuthentication.Encrypt(authTicket));
Response.Cookies.Add(cookie);  

Now I would like to set my web.config in a way that few pages can be only accessed if a user is authenticated. I have my web.config set like this:

<configuration>  
  <system.web>  
    <authentication mode="Forms">  
      <forms loginUrl="~/Account/LogIn" timeout="2880"/> //all users can access my web site  
    </authentication>  
    <authorization>  
      <allow users="*"/>  
    </authorization>  
  </system.web>  
  <location path="~/Views/Sales/Index.aspx">  
    <system.web>  
      <authorization>  
        <deny users="?"/> //only authenticated users can access this page  
      </authorization>  
    </system.web>  
  </location>  
</configuration>  

... but this does not work.

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

It's much easier to put the [Authorize] attribute on the controller action:

public class SalesController : Controller
{
    [Authorize]
    public ActionResult Index()
    { 
        // etc

You can also put the attribute on the controller instead of having to put it on every action method...

Edit in response to your comment: I don't know that it's possible to do natively using XML, but check out http://www.jigar.net/articles/viewhtmlcontent324.aspx

Second edit, I've done some research and testing, and it is possible to use the default ASP.NET web.config stuff, use <location path="~/Sales/Index"> instead of <location path="~/Views/Sales/Index.aspx">

BUT

you have to be really really careful if there's more than one URL that could land you on the same page, such as /, /Home, /Home/, /Home/Index, etc - you won't get the authorization settings on all of them automatically. I think it's much safer to use something MVC-aware, such as the [Authorize] attribute, or the custom scheme I linked to above.

Answer 2

Stop. If you try to use <location> in Web.config to secure an MVC application, you're at the very best making life difficult for yourself, and at the very worst opening up a gigantic security hole in your application.

As Jon alludes to, using [Authorize] or some other thing that correctly hooks the MVC pipeline (whether declarative or programmatic) is the only correct way of doing this. The product team goes into more detail on this issue at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rickandy/archive/2010/08/24/securing-your-mvc-application.aspx.