Question

Where can I plug in a custom provider to set up the request context?

I want to run an ASP.NET MVC application in “slave” mode while gradually transitioning features from a legacy system. Each request will have a cookie, and I want to grab the cookie, make an external call to resolve it to a user identity, and set up that user identity for the remainder of the request.

I might set a forms authentication cookie, or use Session, but the source of truth about authentication has to be the externally-set cookie, on every request.

What’s the best way to do this? Where do I plug in? I’ve looked at Authentication providers, and the Authorization attribute, but neither of those seems the right place for this.

Answer 1

I would have thought an HttpModule would be ideal for this scenario?

If I understand you correctly, I did something similar on a project I was working on recently:

  public class UserSessionHttpModule : IHttpModule
{

    private HttpApplication mApplication;

    public void Dispose()
    {
    }

    public void Init(HttpApplication context)
    {
        mApplication = context;
        context.BeginRequest += new EventHandler(CheckUserSession);
    }

    private void CheckUserSession(Object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        var extension = Path.GetExtension(mApplication.Context.Request.Path);

        if (extension == "" || extension == ".aspx")
        {
            var userSessionService = ObjectFactory.GetInstance<IUserSessionService>();
            userSessionService.CheckUserSession();
        }

    }
}