Programmatically refresh/update HttpContext.User

Question

I'm using FormsAuthentication for an ASP.NET site that has a master page that displays the current logged in user, Page.User.Identity.Name.

They can change their username in their settings, and when the do so, I update their cookie for them so they wont have to sign out/sign back in with a postback.

FormsAuthentication.SignOut();
FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie(username, false);

I'm probably being pretty nit-picky, but after they change their username the master page still displays their original username until they reload or load a different page.

Is there any way to programmatically update the current Page.User, so that their new username can be displayed during the same postback?

Answer 1

you could create an instance of your master page class, and make the property that you're setting for the username public, so that you can set that property right after your FormsAuthentication code.

Answer 2

Though MasterMax's suggestion is what I would do, you can actually update the Page.User via HttpContext.Current.User.

If you know the user's roles (or you aren't using role based authorization), you can take advantage of the System.Security.Principal.GenericPrincipal class:

string newUsername = "New Username";
string[] roles = new string[] {"Role1", "Role2"};

HttpContext.Current.User = 
   new GenericPrincipal(new GenericIdentity(newUserName), roles);