Question

I’m working with ASP.Net Membership with FormsAuth and have run into a strange problem. Here’s the code where I set my Auth cookie:

FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie(emailAddress, true);
string returnUrl = Session["returnUrl"] + "";

The returnUrl variable is passed to a meta refresh tag on the page’s HTML, so the redirect is client side. I did this to make sure the auth cookie was set in the browser before redirecting.

The returnUrl is a page I setup for debugging purposes. It has the following code in its ASPX

<%
    var user = System.Web.Security.Membership.GetUser();
 %>
 <%
    if (user != null)
   {%>
Name: <%=user.UserName%>
<%}
   else
   {%>
       No user found in session
    <%} %>
<br />
User.Identity.IsAuthenticated: <%=User.Identity.IsAuthenticated%><br />

User.Identity.Name: <%=User.Identity.Name%><br />

When I visit the page, IsAuthenticated is true, but the user and the Indentity.Name values are null. I authenticated and set the auth cookie; so why isn’t the user info available?

Any constructive input is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Turns out this was total PEBKAC on my part. What I didn’t notice was that the emailAddress string was null; and had set the auth cookie with the username null; causing the issues described.