Backload 1.9.3.1 file upload handler not working with MVC 5 and ASP.NET Identity

Question

I've been using Backload along JQuery File Upload plugin for over a year now, and it has been working great with my old site using MVC 4 with Simple Membership and backload 1.9.3.0, but when I upgraded my site to MVC 5 and ASP.NET Identity, and backload 1.9.3.1, I started getting problems with backload, I keep getting:

Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 500 (Internal Server Error) from the controller when calling http://xxx/Backload/UploadHandler?objectContext=xx .

When I traced the problem, I found that the problem originated during the Authorization process, which then throws an exception:

Backload Error: 10030080 : Exception occured in Authorization Manager: Object reference not set to an instance of an object..

And then I get the aforementioned response on the browser and the files don't get displayed by Jquery File Upload plugin since it didn't receive anything but an internal server error back from the controller.

I think the problem is that it is trying to get user roles through using System.Web.Security.Roles. I tried to cancel the authorization process but that never seems to work, I've tried the handler from Example 12 on their documentation but it never seems to reach the handler_AuthorizeRequestStarted method because I think the exception gets thrown before that step.

It's a shame if they don't address this problem soon, I really liked their approach.

Answer 1

I got it to work through specifying in the appSettings section of web.config the two following entries:

<add key="autoFormsAuthentication" value="false" />
<add key="enableSimpleMembership" value="false" />

After that everything worked just like before. In fairness I think that these issues are related to ASP.Net Identity rather than to Backload server backend.