How to initialize simple membership in ASP.NET MVC4

Question

How to initialize simple membership in ASP.NET MVC4

Hi, I'm working on ASP.NET MVC4. As you know, membership/authentication mechanism is disabled in ASP.NET MVC4; if we want to enable it, we need to:

1) edit the follow line(in the constructor of the class SimpleMembershipInitializer, file InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute.cs)

WebSecurity.InitializeDatabaseConnection("DefaultConnection", "users", "id", "username", autoCreateTables: true);

2) add a new key to in your Web.Config section.

<appSettings>
    <add key="enableSimpleMembership" value="true" />
    ...
</appSettings>

Right? You can find some information here and here.

NB: I have already created table 'users' in my database, DefaultConnection is set correctly.

EDIT: let "DefaultConnectionString" be

  <connectionStrings>
    <add name="DefaultConnection" connectionString="Data Source=.\SQLEXPRESS;Initial Catalog=aspnet-SimpleAuthenticationMvc4-20140209174604;Integrated Security=SSPI" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
  </connectionStrings>

When I attempt to "login" in my web-application, I get a TargetInvocationException when calling EnsureInitialized(): here the complete source code of my InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute class:

/* class MyApp.Filters.InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute */

namespace MyApp.Filters
{
    [AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Class | AttributeTargets.Method, AllowMultiple = false, Inherited = true)]
    public sealed class InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute
    {
        private static SimpleMembershipInitializer _initializer;
        private static object _initializerLock = new object();
        private static bool _isInitialized;

        public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
        {
            // Ensure ASP.NET Simple Membership is initialized only once per app start
            // HERE i _always_ get TargetInvocationException
            LazyInitializer.EnsureInitialized(ref _initializer, ref _isInitialized, ref _initializerLock);
        }

        private class SimpleMembershipInitializer
        {
            public SimpleMembershipInitializer()
            {
                Database.SetInitializer<UsersContext>(null);

                try
                {
                    using (var context = new UsersContext())
                    {
                        if (!context.Database.Exists())
                        {
                            // Create the SimpleMembership database without Entity Framework migration schema
                            ((IObjectContextAdapter)context).ObjectContext.CreateDatabase();
                        }
                    }

                    /* DefaultConnection and table 'users' should/seems to be OK */
                    WebSecurity.InitializeDatabaseConnection("DefaultConnection", "users", "id", "username", autoCreateTables: true);

                }
                catch (Exception ex)
                {
                    ...
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Someone suggested me that this error can mean that the simple membership is initialized in another part of the application, but I do not understand where this might happen: Here is the text of my global.asax.cs:

/* file global.asax.cs */

namespace MyApp
{
    public class MvcApplication : System.Web.HttpApplication
    {
        protected void Application_Start()
        {
            AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas();

            WebApiConfig.Register(GlobalConfiguration.Configuration);
            FilterConfig.RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilters.Filters);
            RouteConfig.RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);
            BundleConfig.RegisterBundles(BundleTable.Bundles);
            AuthConfig.RegisterAuth();
        }
    }
}

Nothing strange, as you can see. I also tried to move around within the file global.asax.cs, as is suggested here, but even so I get the same exception.

I have no special requirements: I only want to log-in in my MVC 4 application, as I do with MVC3 app I have written previously.

Can anyone suggest me where is the mistake?

Thanks!

IT

Answer 1

Okay I am assuming you want to use your existing users table right? Is "DefaultConnection" your connection string? I am assuming not. So you should use your connection string instead.

Initially I also ran into an initialization issue so I preferred to ditch the filter and initialize it directly in global.asax by

if (!WebSecurity.Initialized)
            {
                WebSecurity.InitializeDatabaseConnection("YOUR_DB_CONTEXT", "USER_TABLE", "ID_COLUMN", "USERNAME_COLUMN", true);
            }

I posted my tutorial on setting it up Here. I think it can help you.