Question

I am using basic authentication for my web api and am getting the following error

*{“Message”:”An error has occurred.”,”ExceptionMessage”:”A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: Named Pipes Provider, error: 40 – Could not open a connection to SQL *

It works absolutely fine when i remove the basic auth implementation from my APIs. So am guessing the problem should be something related to system.web.providers which am using for the basic auth implementation.

This is how my connection string looks like

<connectionStrings>
<add name="DefaultConnection" connectionString="Password=password;Persist Security Info=True;User ID=wbuser;Initial Catalog=WinBouts_com;Data Source=WINBOUTSAPIVM"
  providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
<add name="WinBoutsConnectionString" connectionString="Password=password;Persist Security Info=True;User ID=wbuser;Initial Catalog=WinBouts_com;Data Source=WINBOUTSAPIVM"
  providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />    

And i see an error in my web.config where a session provider is added. The error says “the connectionStringName attribute is not allowed”. But if i remove it then it asks for the connectionStringName. This is the code for it.

 <!--
        If you are deploying to a cloud environment that has multiple web server instances,
        you should change session state mode from "InProc" to "Custom". In addition,
        change the connection string named "DefaultConnection" to connect to an instance
        of SQL Server (including SQL Azure and SQL  Compact) instead of to SQL Server Express.
  -->
<sessionState mode="Custom" customProvider="DefaultSessionProvider">
  <providers>
    <add name="DefaultSessionProvider" type="System.Web.Providers.DefaultSessionStateProvider, System.Web.Providers, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" connectionStringName="WinBoutsConnectionString" />
  </providers>
</sessionState>

Can anyone please tell me where i might be going wrong? Any suggestions or ideas would be deeply appreciated.

Answer 1

Finally Resolved the issue. The problem was in my Basic Authentication filter class.

private bool TryGetPrincipal(string username, string password, out IPrincipal principal)
    {      string connectionString = ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["WinBoutsConnectionString"].ConnectionString;    

        username = username.Trim();
        password = password.Trim();

        //only supporting SSO login atm
       // var valid = Membership.Provider.ValidateUser(username, password);
        serviceContext = new WinBoutsDataContext<DataAccess.Model.UserInfo>(connectionString);
        userRepository = new UserRepository(serviceContext);

        var valid = this.userRepository.ValidateAccount(username, password);

        if (valid)
        {
            // once the user is verified, assign it to an IPrincipal with the identity name and applicable roles
            principal = new GenericPrincipal(new GenericIdentity(username), System.Web.Security.Roles.GetRolesForUser(username));
            return true;
        }

        //user wasn't found, unauthorised
        principal = null;
        return false;
    }

I have hardcoded my DataContext here but earlier i didnt pass my connection string into it. I just went for the default constructor of the WinBoutsDataContext which didnt work when i put the code on to the server.