Sharing data between Actions and application behavior

Question

Hi,
This is my application's current workflow for user registration.

1. register form ( GET /register )
2. submit the form ( POST /register )
3. after success, redirect route to "/registerSuccess"
4. in (GET /registerSuccess ) view, I want to show the message like "username has been registered successfully".

Controller Actions:

public ActionResult Register()
{
    return View();
}

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Register(string name, string password, string confirmPassword)
{
    TempData["registered_user"] = name;
    return RedirectToRoute("RegisterSuccess");
}

public ActionResult RegisterSuccess()
{
    return View();
}

RegisterSuccess View

<h2><%: TempData["registered_user"] %> has been registered successfully.</h2>

It is working fine except the username is empty when user refresh the page (GET /registerSuccess).

Is it normal behavior in other applications? or Should I do something about it? :) (It is my pet project and requirements come from me :P )

update: Actually, there is one more step which is registered user required admin's approval. So, I can't let user log in after successful register. I'm currently using cookie-based FormsAuthentication to track logged in user.

I prefer to use PRG pattern rather than showing flash message in the submit form.

Answer 1

Hmm...

Normally you should think of a SSO solution, that holds your User's authentication (token). then you would just need to display the current authenticated user (as a completed registration normally logs in the user)

other solution would be, to add the user in the url, so that the success page has all parameters.

/registerSuccess/<username>

(and maybe check, that the logged in user is just registered, and is the same)

for your own fun project, i would do the second one. ist just plain simple.

Answer 2

that is normal behaviour.. when the user 'refreshes' the page is requested directly not through your Register function so registered_user key is gone by then. When you do the initial registration you should use a session marker (say a cookie) to track a successfully logged in user.

Using cookies tutorial is a good place to start

If you were to use HTTP authentication (say Basic Auth) then the browser submits the username and password (in clear text for basic auth) with every request that sends out a 401 Unauthorized (see HTTP/1.0 Protocol)