How to update last login date if "Remember Me" set?

Question

When a user logs in to my site, the date of the visit is stamped in the database (User table). This is handled by the (custom) membership provider. However, if the user checks the "Remember me?" option when logging in, they are (naturally) not prompted to log in on subsequent visits. As the membership provider is not employed in this situation, the last login date is not updated in the database.

Using forms authentication, how can I ensure that the last login date is updated on each new visit to the site, rather just when they physically log in? Is there any event I can hook into to achieve this?

I can't use session state, as it is completely disabled in the web site I'm developing (the session module has been removed).

Thanks

Answer 1

I'm assuming that you are using cookies (I can't see how the "Remember me" would work otherwise).

When a user logs-in, set two cookies, one permanent (if Remember Me is checked) and one temporary (this session-only). The second is what you use to authorize the user.

So, on a page where a user needs to be logged in, look for the session cookie. If found, continue as normal. If not found, look for the permanent cookie, if found, look the user in, set the log-in date, and set the session cookie. (If the permanent cookie isn't found, he just not logged in).

Answer 2

Assuming you are talking about ASP.NET 2.0 (given the membership provider comment).

Wherever you are checking the cookie to see if the user should be autologged in, you should call out to the membership provider's GetUser function which takes a boolean to update the user's activity date.

Per the MSDN docs:

MembershipProvider.GetUser Method

Takes, as input, a unique user identifier and a Boolean value indicating whether to update the LastActivityDate value for the user to show that the user is currently online. The GetUser method returns a MembershipUser object populated with current values from the data source for the specified user. If the user name is not found in the data source, the GetUser method returns null (Nothing in Visual Basic).