How do I create an Authentication Cookie in a custom MembershipProvider?

Question

I'm trying to create a custom MembershipProvider and I was wondering how I would add my user information to the Authentication Cookie that ASP.NET uses. My goal is to get my authentication to work for both the website and the WCF service with ASP.NET Compabatibility mode enabled.

Answer 1

You are using MembershipProvider in your application, so all you have to do is just use the inbuilt login control and set it's provider property to the type of your MembershipProvider. FormsAuthentication will take care of creating authentication cookies for your users.

You need to specify URL of your default page [where your users will go after successful login] and the URL of the login page which hosts the Login control. FormsAuthentication will check if user is authenticated, if it founds user not logged and your asp.net page demands authentication, then FormsAuthentication will redirect the user to the Login page specified in web.config's FormsAuthentication section.

That is how you leverage Providers in ASP.NET 2.0+, you need not do things explicitly, everything is configurable.

Here are some links for your reference, which will guide you through what you need.

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/879kf95c.aspx

• http://quickstarts.asp.net/QuickStartv20/aspnet/doc/ctrlref/login/login.aspx

• http://www.asp.net/learn/videos/video-7420.aspx

• http://www.asp.net/learn/videos/video-148.aspx

• http://www.asp.net/learn/videos/video-47.aspx