Using Multiple Profile Providers with Overlapping Properties

Question

I am working with a site that needs to use two different asp.net profile providers. They are both added in the web.config and the properties of each of them are listed there as well. I run into a problem when I try to enable a property that has the same name in each provider. Comment one out, and the site will at least load. Leave both in, and I get an error like:

Item has already been added. Key in dictionary: 'myfieldname' Key being added: 'MyFieldName'

The properties are entirely different (different types even), but I am missing how I would allow both to be used.

There must be some way I am missing as this seems like it could be a common problem.

Answer 1

I've only ever implemented a single profile system with a Web Application project. With the Website template, the functionality is out of the box. Profiles allow you to store some extra information per user when using the ASP.NET membership system. Profiles are stored in the database automatically when we add this extra information to our web.config file.

It makes sense that there would be a clash if you are using profile properties with the same names - a possible solution would be to create your own table mapping - for example, give 'MyFieldName' an alias in the web.config but map it to the real property name in your code. Since much of the functionality is out-of-the-box with the website template, you may be limited in the amount of customization you can perform.

The following links may help:

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/WebProfileBuilder

http://weblogs.asp.net/joewrobel/archive/2008/02/03/web-profile-builder-for-web-application-projects.aspx

http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2008/01/19/writing-a-custom-asp-net-profile-class.aspx