ASP.NET MVC, Forms Authentication, and Session - asp.net-mvc-3

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.

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

Why? You can access Membership.GetUser from anywhere. It's a static method. What is the point of placing a value you can access from anywhere in a place you can access from anywhere?

Related

ASP.NET Core 2.2 - Action Filter db Query Question

I have users in our app, who are mapped to companies. When a user logs in and starts to make requests I want a way to validate if that user is currently mapped to the company for access to company resources.
The idea I had was to create a whole controller just to manage all of this, but someone mentioned ActionFilters as a much better and cleaner option, I have to agree after looking at it.
The idea is to have the controller setup as:
controller - action - CompanyId - ReportId
So any request to root the system would just look up if there are any companies mapped to that logged in user.
But if the request included CompanyId then they'd go to that company's “portal” account page. It's really any request that includes CompanyId where I want the actionFilter to make a determination on if that user is allowed access.
Request comes in...
There is a CompanyId in the request!
ActionFilter:
Look up in db for all users assigned to that CompanyId. Is current user within that list? No? = kick'em out.
I tried to type in a code example, but the system told me to manually indent each line by 4 spaces, I was doing it from memory anyways so no idea how helpful it would have been anyways.
You could get your action parameters in your action filter and then get your database via HttpContext.RequestServices.GetRequiredService<ApplicationDbContext>().Refer to here.
public class TestActionFilter:Attribute,IActionFilter
{
public void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext context)
{
//If companyId is action parameter
var companyId= context.ActionArguments["companyId"].ToString();
//If companyId1 is query string
var companyId1= context.HttpContext.Request.Query["companyId1"].ToString();
//If companyId2 is in request header
var companyId2= context.HttpContext.Request.Headers["companyId2"].ToString();
//get your dbcontext
var db = context.HttpContext.RequestServices.GetRequiredService<ApplicationDbContext>();
//EF core logic
//...
}
public void OnActionExecuted(ActionExecutedContext context)
{
}
}
You could use it on action directly using [TestActionFilter] attribute or set as global filter
services.AddMvc(options =>
{
options.Filters.Add(new TestActionFilter()); // an instance
});

What is a good way to pass additional information to the http response when issuing access token with Owin middleware in Asp Net Web Api?

I am using Owin middleware to implement token-based security for my application. When issuing the access token to the client I would also like to pass User Id along with the token, so that, the client application will know the User Id and will be able to call GetUserById (one of the methods inside UserController) in order to show the user his starting page. The best solution I could come up with so far is just adding User Id to the response header. Take a look at my OAuthAuthorizationServerProvider class, in GrantResourceOwnerCredentialsmethod I am adding User Id to the header, using context.Response.Headers.Add("User-Id", new string[] { "1" })
Here is the implementation of my OAuthAuthorizationServerProviderclass
public class AuthorizationServerProvider : OAuthAuthorizationServerProvider
{
public override async Task ValidateClientAuthentication(OAuthValidateClientAuthenticationContext context)
{
context.Validated();
}
public override async Task GrantResourceOwnerCredentials(OAuthGrantResourceOwnerCredentialsContext context)
{
var identity = new ClaimsIdentity(context.Options.AuthenticationType);
//The actual credential check will be added later
if (context.UserName=="user" && context.Password=="user")
{
identity.AddClaim(new Claim("Id", "1"));
context.Validated(identity);
//Here I am adding User Id to the response header
context.Response.Headers.Add("User-Id", new string[] { "1" });
}
else
{
context.SetError("invalid_grant","The credentials provided are not valid");
return;
}
}
}
Basically the client then will have to read User-Id from the header. Is this a good solution I came up with or there is a better one? Also what if I want to pass the whole User object with all its properties to the response is it possible and how to do this?
Since you store the ID already in the claims, why don't you just decode your token on the client and read out the user id like that? Passing it through the headers could allow tampering with it (security).
Have a look on how you could achieve to decode your token and read the claims. This is a c# example https://contos.io/peeking-inside-your-jwt-tokens-using-c-bf6a729d06c8 but this could also be done even through javascript.
This, assuming you use the JWT-format as token (was not specified in your initial question).
Bad way to store UserID as a response header back to client side. This is a huge security concern.
The best way would be to store it as a Claims.
It is very easy to achieve this and get back the claims in the client side.
In your controller, call this and remember to reference
using Microsoft.AspNet.Identity;
var userId = User.Identity.GetUserId();

Parse Server Access PFUser in BeforeSave Trigger

I need to check a property of my PFUser's in beforeSave triggers for each of my classes to determine if that user should be allowed to edit the piece of data they are attempting to edit.
For example, if a non-admin PFUser is attempting to edit or add to a class they shouldn't be allowed to, I want to prevent that in the beforeSave trigger. I access the keys being edited using dirtyKeys.
Parse-Server doesn't support .currentUser() like the old Parse server used to. How can I access the PFUser who is making the request? Is there a way to do it besides through session tokens?
Parse.Cloud.beforeSave("Class", function(request, response) {
//Get the keys that're being edited and iterate through them
var dirtyKeys = request.object.dirtyKeys();
for (var i = 0; i < dirtyKeys.length; ++i) {
var dirtyKey = dirtyKeys[i];
//Allow or don't allow editing of each key
if (userObject.get("<KEY>")) {
console.log('Class before save trigger IS key');
//ADD CLASS SPECIFIC FUNCTIONALITY HERE
} else {
console.log('Class before save trigger NOT key');
//ADD CLASS SPECIFIC FUNCTIONALITY HERE
}
}
});
Turns out the answer is much more obvious than I anticipated and was in the docs but I overlooked it despite my searching.
Since Parse.User.current() isn't working in Parse Server, the replacement is simply request.user. I was able to easily access all the data I needed from this and am good to go.
var user = request.user; // request.user replaces Parse.User.current()

Updating a session and using it within my view

I have a wish list, that is throughout the shopping pages. I need to know if this makes sense/the proper way of structuring.
Store the wish list as a session, when a user adds/deletes a new item it updates the session by an ajax call that just returns true/false if successful. On the partial view of the wish list component, I check for the session and cast it to my viewModel (which the session is based on) or serialize it for my knockout.
Let me know if this makes sense, otherwise I can post some code samples
It's hard to say without having a look at your basic structure, and not knowing you exact needs.
I don't know if you know this, but you can actually access the Session directly in Views:
#{
var wishlist = (WishList)HttpContext.Current.Session["Wishlist"];
}
It's fine to use Ajax to update it server side; and then you can return a partial view from the controller, to use however you like in the Ajax success call.
I hope this makes sense.
To begin with, if the wishlist is only supposed to exist for the duration of their visit then storing it in a session would be the best thing to do. However if the wishlist is supposed to live longer than a single visit and should be available to the user upon their return then I would suggest storing it in the database against the user's credentials/account (this is presuming they have an account).
As for the session itself, whilst you can access session data from a view I would not suggest it as you start to have a dependency on the session and before long you'll have code such as this scattered throughout your views.
var wishlist = (WishList)HttpContext.Current.Session["Wishlist"];
What happens when you want to change the way the wishlist works and instead have it database driven as you'd now like to persist the wishlist? You'll have to go through all of your views updating the references to the session.
Instead I would opt for registering your session with your IoC container of choice and injecting it using dependency injection, here is a simple example of how to register the session with StructureMap:
public class WebsiteRegistry : Registry
{
public WebsiteRegistry()
{
this.For<IUserWishlist>().HybridHttpOrThreadLocalScoped().Use(() => GetUserWishlistFromSession());
}
public static IUserWishlist GetUserWishlistFromSession()
{
var session = HttpContext.Current.Session;
if (session["WishList"] != null)
{
return session["WishList"] as IUserWishlist;
}
/* Create new empty session object */
session["WishList"] = new UserWishlist();
return session["WishList"] as IUserWishlist;
}
}
Now you're able to inject your wishlist into your controller and pass the data to your view via a view model. And as you're now programming against an interface instead of an implementation you could easily change how the wishlist is persisted without needing to change any code that references the wishlist.
public class WishlistController : Controller {
private readonly IUserWishlist userWishlist;
public void WishlistController(IUserWishlist userWishlist) {
this.userWishlist= userWishlist;
}
public ActionResult ViewProfile()
{
...
var viewModel = new UserWishlistViewModel {
wishlist = this.userWishlist.GetWishList()
}
...
}
}
I've written a more detailed example up in a blog post that might be of interest which can be read here. I hope this helps!

How can I override the session ID for a node.js express session (using passport)

I'm implementing a passport strategy that calls our internal auth service. The internal auth service generates the session ID, so I need to make sure the connect session uses that ID instead of the default generated ID.
Is there a way to do this? Is it possible to provide my own hook function to connect to produce the session id? I can't imagine it's as simple as setting session.id or anything like that, because I don't have control over when or how connect actually creates the session.
Has anyone solved this problem?
This cannot be done with the current implementation of Connect's session middleware, but you can fork the session middleware and change how the session id is generated, namely this line:
https://github.com/senchalabs/connect/blob/master/lib/middleware/session.js#L202
By "fork" I mean copying the file above, changing the assignment of the sessionID and using your new file instead when configuring the session middleware.
UPDATE:
Here's how I would regenerate the session with a custom id (note - this is just an idea, I haven't tested it):
// this is the function you'll be calling in your routes or whatever
req.regenerateSession = function(newSid) {
// keep old session data
var oldSessionData = req.session;
// destroy current session and make a new one with your custom id
store.destroy(req.sessionID, function() {
store.generate(req, newSid);
// copy back the session data
// since you don't want to lose it probably
req.session = oldSessionData;
});
}
// replace the session store generate function to accept a custom sessionID
// https://github.com/senchalabs/connect/blob/master/lib/middleware/session.js#L201
store.generate = function(req, customID) {
req.sessionID = customID || utils.uid(24);
req.session = new Session(req);
req.session.cookie = new Cookie(req, cookie);
}

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