Question

When a valid user logs into the system and closes the browser without logging out, it occasionally (i.e. not immediately after but in the next day) prevents the user to login back into the system throwing the following:

Error: 403 – Forbidden: Access is denied. You do not have permission to view this directory or page using the credentials that you supplied.

This question refers to the same problem but in his solution, he decided not to use persistent cookies by passing false as a parameter when creating the FormsAuthenticationTicket, which is not the desired solution.

This is how I am creating the cookie:

private void createCookie(string username, int customerID, bool persist)
{
    HttpCookie cookie = FormsAuthentication.GetAuthCookie(username, persist);
    cookie.Expires = DateTime.Now.AddHours(12);
    var ticket = FormsAuthentication.Decrypt(cookie.Value);
    var userData = customerID.ToString();
    var newTicket = new FormsAuthenticationTicket(ticket.Version, ticket.Name, ticket.IssueDate, ticket.Expiration, ticket.IsPersistent, userData);
    cookie.Value = FormsAuthentication.Encrypt(newTicket);
    Response.Cookies.Add(cookie);
}

Any ideas on how to solve this?

Answer 1

There is no inherent problem with including your own userData in the auth cookie.
In one of our websites we use the asp.net login control, and add the following event listener with much success:

    protected void Login1_LoggedIn(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        //... unimportant code left out

        //Update the users ticket with custom userInfo object
        string userData = userInfo.Id.ToString("N");
        HttpCookie cookie = Response.Cookies.Get(FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName);
        FormsAuthenticationTicket oldTicket = FormsAuthentication.Decrypt(cookie.Value);
        FormsAuthenticationTicket newTicket =
            new FormsAuthenticationTicket(
                oldTicket.Version,
                oldTicket.Name,
                oldTicket.IssueDate,
                oldTicket.Expiration,
                oldTicket.IsPersistent,
                userData,
                oldTicket.CookiePath);
        cookie.Value = FormsAuthentication.Encrypt(newTicket);
 }