Question

I have one controller that takes a username and pass and checks against a database. IF the user is authenticated, I want to call an overloaded action on another controller.

My end goal is to authenticate a user against an old table from a MySQL db (I have this part working). Once the user is authenticated, I would like to be able to “automagically” forward the person to the built in MVC registration page but I would like to populate some fields in the view using data obtained from the first controller (the old databse info).

When I try something like what I have below I get an error about the Register() methods being ambiguous. I’ve also tried using the [ActionName(“Register2”)] attribute but then the error returned says it cant find a method named Register2.

    public class MigrateAccountController : Controller
    {
        OldUserRepository oldDb = new OldUserRepository();
        public ActionResult Index()
        {

            return View();
        }
        [HttpPost]
        public ActionResult Index(User u)
        {
            if (oldDb.isValid(u.username, u.password))
                return RedirectToAction("Register", "Account", u);


            return View(u);
        }
    }
    public class AccountController : Controller
    {
        public IFormsAuthenticationService FormsService { get; set; }
        public IMembershipService MembershipService { get; set; }

        protected override void Initialize(RequestContext requestContext)
        {
            if (FormsService == null) { FormsService = new FormsAuthenticationService(); }
            if (MembershipService == null) { MembershipService = new AccountMembershipService(); }

            base.Initialize(requestContext);
        }
        public ActionResult Register(User u)
        {
            return View(u);
        }
        public ActionResult Register()
        {
            ViewBag.PasswordLength = MembershipService.MinPasswordLength;
            return View();
        }
    }

Answer 1

First thing you cannot have the same action name on the same controller that is accessible on the same verb. You need to either change the action name or use a different HTTP verb:

public class AccountController : Controller
{
    public IFormsAuthenticationService FormsService { get; set; }
    public IMembershipService MembershipService { get; set; }

    protected override void Initialize(RequestContext requestContext)
    {
        if (FormsService == null) { FormsService = new FormsAuthenticationService(); }
        if (MembershipService == null) { MembershipService = new AccountMembershipService(); }

        base.Initialize(requestContext);
    }

    [HttpPost]
    public ActionResult Register(User u)
    {
        return View(u);
    }

    public ActionResult Register()
    {
        ViewBag.PasswordLength = MembershipService.MinPasswordLength;
        return View();
    }
}

and in order to pass data between actions, well, if you are using GET, you could pass them as query string parameters when redirecting.

Or IMHO a better way would be not to redirect in this case but simply return the corresponding view by passing it the proper view model:

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Index(User u)
{
    if (oldDb.isValid(u.username, u.password))
    {
        return View("~/Account/Register.aspx", u);
    }
    return View(u);       
}