Question

I would like to execute the below line when the user logs in so that I have access to the MembershipUser object. However I am having a hard time figuring out when to set it.

 Session["User"] = Membership.GetUser();

So far I’ve tried…

• Application_AcquireRequestState
• Application_BeginRequest
• FormsAuthentication_OnAuthenticate

For each the session state isn’t necessarily available.

Manually calling it in the log-in page is easy, but I need to have it work when automatically logging in using cookies as well.

Answer 1

If all you want do is store arbitrary data along with the username, there is an open source project called FormsAuthenticationExtensions that allows you to do exactly this in a very simple manner:

In your Login action you would store your data like this:

var ticketData = new NameValueCollection
{
    { "name", user.FullName },
    { "emailAddress", user.EmailAddress }
};
new FormsAuthentication().SetAuthCookie(user.UserId, true, ticketData); 

And you read it back like this:

var ticketData = ((FormsIdentity) User.Identity).Ticket.GetStructuredUserData();
var name = ticketData["name"];
var emailAddress = ticketData["emailAddress"]; 

Data is stored in the same cookie holding the authentication ticket, so it will be available for as long as the user is logged in.

Project page: http://formsauthext.codeplex.com/

Nuget: http://nuget.org/List/Packages/FormsAuthenticationExtensions