Question

Basically, I log into my website using OpenId, very similar to what I am assuming SO does. When I get the information back, I throw it into a database and create my ‘Registered User’. I set my AuthCookie:

FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie(user.Profile.MyProfile.DisplayName, false); 

Then I can use this for the User Name. However, I would like to pass in the entire object instead of just the string for display name. So my question is:

How does SO do it?

Do they extend/override the SetAuthCookie(string, bool) method to accept the User object, i.e. SetAuthCookie(User(object), bool).

What is the best way to persist a User object so that it is available to my UserControl on every single page of my Web Application?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

You can achieve this behavior by implementing your custom Membership Provider, or extending an existing one. The provider stores user information based on a key (or just by user name) and provides access to the MembershipUser class, which you can extend however you wish. So when you call FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie(...), you basically set the user key, which can be accessed be the provider.

When you call Membership.GetUser(), the membership infrastructure will invoke the underlying provider and call its GetUser(...) method providing it with a key of the current user. Thus you will receive the current user object.