Question

Using ASP.net, is there a recommended best way to access a particular field of the profile in code. I was looking in my old Problem-Design-Solution 2.0 book, and it does it by pulling all members in the DB and then iterating through each one’s profile (see code below). Is there a better way?

for each (MembershipUser user in Membership.GetAllUsers())
{
    ProfileCommon userProfile = profile.GetProfile(user.UserName);
    if (userProfile.mysetting == desiredValue)
    { 
         //do something
    }
}

Edit 1

I found that it can be done a little more efficiently than pulling members and then pulling profiles. It is possible that not all members have a profile, so if you use the following code, you’ll pull all the profiles (which may be fewer in number than members, and then can iterate across it:

for each (ProfileInfo theProfile in ProfileManager.GetAllProfiles (ProfileAuthenticationOption.All)
{
    ProfileCommon pc = ProfileBase.Create(theProfile.UserName)
    if (pc.mysetting == desiredValue)
    {
        //do something
    }
}

It still round trips the DB for each profile, but it may not do it as many as if we used the members…

Answer 1

With built-in Profiles, no there isn’t a better way. One option as provided by Tim is Table Profile provider or writing your own profile provider.

Or you can go completely other route i.e. storing profile information in your own custom table.