Introduction:
I am currently working on a project that
requires to transfer the values from one virtual directory to another. In
ASP.NET 1.X I used the technique of transfering the GUID of the user and later
retrieving the user information based on the GUID of the User. You can view the
technique at
Maintaining Session Between Applications. In this article I will show you
that how you can use the Profile class to pass the values from one web
application to another.
Creating Profile Tables, Stored
Procedures, Roles and Views:
The first thing that you need to do is to
configure your database so that it can hold the Profiles for the users. You can
easily configure this using the command line tool called "aspnet_regsql". Simply, open
the Visual Studio.NET 2005 command prompt and enter aspnet_regsql.exe this will
open a wizard which will guide you through the steps. After all the steps are
completed successfully you will notice that there are various new tables,
stored procedures, views and roles created in your database. All these new
elements were created when you ran aspnet_regsql utility.
Setting up the project:
The first thing that you need to do is to add a
blank solution and add two web application projects to it. First web application
project is called TestApp1 and the second one is called TestApp2. Set the
authentication mode to Forms, this is done by simply setting the mode in the
authentication section to "Forms" in the web.config file (The default mode of
authentication is Windows).
Setting up the User Interface:
The User Interface of this application is
created in TestApp1. Let's view the simple User Interface below:
As, you can see in the image above that I am
simply taking User Name, First Name and the Last Name as input. Now, let's delve
into the details and see how this is working.
Configuring Profile Object in Web.config:
Before you do anything with the profile object
you need to set it up in the web.config file. Here are the configuration
settings defined for my Profile object in web.config file:
| <connectionStrings>
<add
name="ConnectionString"
connectionString="Server=localhost;Database=MyDatabase;Trusted_Connection=true"/>
</connectionStrings>
<system.web>
<!--
PROFILE CONFIGURATION
-->
<profile
defaultProvider="MyProfileProvider">
<providers>
<add
name="MyProfileProvider"
type="System.Web.Profile.SqlProfileProvider"
connectionStringName="ConnectionString"
applicationName="MyApplication"/>
</providers>
<properties>
<clear/>
<add
name="FirstName"/>
<add
name="LastName"/>
</properties>
</profile> |
As, you can see that I have first defined the
connectionString and then the profile settings. One thing that you should notice is that I am using the applicationName in the profile configuration. The attribute applicationName
denotes that this profile will be used for this particular application and is
recognized by the name "MyApplication". If two of you web applications have
web.config and uses the same applicationName then it means that the profile
object will be shared between two applications.
THE CODE:
Now, let's see the code of the Button click
event which authenticates the user.
|
protected
void Button1_Click(object
sender, EventArgs
e) {
FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie(txtUserName.Text,
false);
Response.Cookies.Add(new
HttpCookie("FirstName",
txtFirstName.Text));
Response.Cookies.Add(new
HttpCookie("LastName",
txtLastName.Text));
Response.Redirect(Request.ApplicationPath);
} |
In the button click event I authenticate the
user and set the user cookie. I saves the First Name and the Last Name in the
cookie so I can later assign it to the Profile Object. Response.Redirect will
load the page again and it will fire the Page_Load event.
|
protected
void Page_Load(object
sender, EventArgs
e) {
if
(Request.IsAuthenticated)
{
// Write the
information into the Profile object
Profile.FirstName =
HttpContext.Current.Request.Cookies["FirstName"].Value;
Profile.LastName =
HttpContext.Current.Request.Cookies["LastName"].Value;
Response.Redirect("http://localhost:1059/TestApp2/Default.aspx");
}
} |
The userName is assigned to the cookie in the
Global.asax file as I have shown below:
| void
Application_AuthenticateRequest(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (Request.IsAuthenticated)
{
// Set the cookie here
Response.Cookies.Add(new HttpCookie("UserName",
User.Identity.Name));
// Do whatever .....
}
}
|
| The technique that I have
demonstrated might not be practical since you are saving the information in
the cookie and later assigning the values from the cookie to the profile
object. Profile object should be assigned only when the user is
authenticated. In the code above I am doing authentication and assignment at
the same time. |
You must be wondering that why did I made a
User Name cookie. This is created so I can transfer the User Name to the next
application and on the basis of the User Name I can retrieve the user's profile
from the database.
| If you are using the Windows
authentications instead of the Forms authentication then you don't need to
pass the cookie since you will be using your windows account to authenticate
the user and you will be automatically authenticated in the other
application. |
Now, let's see the second application code
which receives the User Name and gets the profile from the database.
|
protected
void Page_Load(object
sender, EventArgs
e) {
if
(!Page.IsPostBack)
{
string
userName = String.Empty;
string
firstName = String.Empty;
string
lastName = String.Empty;
// Get the
cookie
if
(Request.Cookies["UserName"]
!= null
&&
Request.Cookies["UserName"].Value.Length
> 0)
{
userName = Request.Cookies["UserName"].Value;
// Get the
profile based on userName
ProfileCommon
userProfile = Profile.GetProfile(userName);
firstName = userProfile.FirstName;
lastName = userProfile.LastName;
}
Label1.Text = userName +
":"
+ lastName + ":"
+ firstName;
}
} |
As, you can see in the above code that I am
retrieving the User Name from the cookies collection and used that User Name to
get the complete profile of the user. Now, you can use the profile in a
different application. Also note that you need to use same profile settings in
web.config for the TestApp2 which you used for TestApp1. The connection string
must also be same since you configured "MyDatabase" to store the profile.
Conclusion:
As, you saw in this article that how you can
pass the values from one virtual directory to another. I think what would be
great is that if you can pass the profile without using the cookie to store the
user name. According to the Microsoft documentation you only require the
application name to be same to pass the profile object. Unfortunately, this only
works for windows authentication.
Please feel free to download the the source
code at the end of this article.
I hope you liked the article! happy coding.