C # MVC view files only for logged in users - asp.net-mvc

how can I set about c # MVC viewing files with absolute path (eg. www.mysite.it/namefile.pdf) only for authenticated users ? for authentication use the method FormsAuthentication.Authenticate(). thanks for the support.

I think that the more properly way to do that is:
www.mysite.it/f={filename}
And in your controller you use the [Authorize] to check if user is authenticated. If the user is authenticated you allow him to view, or download, the file.
The following code can help you to understand:
//Ensure that the user is authenticated
[Authorize]
public class HomeController : Controller
{
string DefaultFileFolder = "C:/Files";
public ActionResult Index(string f)
{
//File request
if (!String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(f))
{
var filePath = System.IO.Path.Combine(DefaultFileFolder, f);
var mimeType = "text/plain";
return File(filePath, mimeType);
}
return View();
}
}

As far as I know the only way to do this is to route requests for static content through ASP.NET. Normally you don't do this as IIS by itself is far more efficient at serving these types of resources.
From this excellent article, you can force static content requests to go through ASP.NET by:
On IIS 7 this is done either by setting
runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests=”true” or removing the
"managedHandler" preCondition for the UrlRoutingModule.
Depending on your needs, you may wish to do something more in line with what Richard suggested. Something like this perhaps?

Related

Performance ramifications of serving FilePath rather than View

What are the performance ramifications if any of serving a FilePathResult rather than a view (If we have created server cached copies of a website using a headless browser)
public class HomeController : Controller
{
public ActionResult Index()
{
var url = Request.RawUrl.Replace("/", "_");
var path = System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["PreloadPath"] + "\\" + url + ".html";
if (System.IO.File.Exists(path))
{
return new FilePathResult(path, "text/html");
}
else
{
return View("Index");
}
}
}
We are having to access the AppSettings every request now, use the File System to check if a file exists, and then serve that html file.
What costs are there compared with just
return View("Index");
Will the file access have any cost on the server? Or am I talking nonsense, and IIS would have to perform some similar action?
Note: Please suggest any other tags if I should add them
Looking at the FilePathResult's source code you can see that in the end it goes down to WriteStreamAsText of HttpResponse. It's obvious that there is no magic call to IIS for example to handle the file directly without any .Net code taking place.
Having said that I still expect this to be somewhat faster than running a view, which possibly needs interpretation and execution.

How to set permissions dynamically in Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc.Facebook.FacebookAuthorize?

Controller
public partial class HomeController
{
private static String[] userPermissions;
public HomeController()
{
var MyPermission = Convert.ToString(TempData["MyPermission"]);
userPermissions = (MyPermission).Split(',');
}
[Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc.Facebook.FacebookAuthorize(userPermissions)]
public virtual ActionResult MyActionMethod()
{
return View();
}
}
Overload
Compilation Error
In the above block, we have following code
[Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc.Facebook.FacebookAuthorize(userPermissions)]
It is giving below compilation error...
Not sure if it helps but this is how I let users add additional permissions.
/// <summary>
/// Use this method when an action fails due to lack of priviligies. It will redirect user to facebook with provided permission request.
/// Refactor to handle list of request.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="permission"></param>
private static void AddAdditionalPermissions(string permission)
{
System.Diagnostics.Trace.TraceInformation(permission + " not authorized for user.");
string facebook_urlAuthorize_base = "https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/authorize";
string scope = permission; //see: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/permissions/ for extended permissions
string urlAuthorize = facebook_urlAuthorize_base;
urlAuthorize += "?client_id=" + AppId;
urlAuthorize += "&redirect_uri=" + "https://mydomainnamehere.nu/";
urlAuthorize += "&scope=" + scope;
//redirect the users browser to Facebook to ask the user to authorize our Facebook application
HttpContext.Current.Response.Redirect(urlAuthorize, true); //this cannot be done using WebRequest since facebook may need to show dialogs in the users browser
}
It is my understanding that you cannot dynamically assign anything to an attribute argument (as the error message backups up).
I do something with my Custom Membership Provider that I think you could adapt to meet your goal. I wanted a roles/rights setup defining user access to various parts of the system without needing to assign a bunch of individual rights to the users but still have very granular control of what each role can do. I followed the approach here (with some changes) to accomplish this.
The approach I would take if there is a need to do this on the fly in your scenario is define a constant Role to use in the FacebookAuthorize attribute for an ActionMethod and then in whatever is handling your permission checking pass (or have it look up) the array of permissions for each "role". This way the "role" you assign to the AuthorizeAttribute is a constant.

Extending Windows Authentication in ASP.NET MVC 3 Application

after a lot of googling and reading several solutions on how to manage mixed mode authentication in ASP.NET apps, I still have no fitting solution for my problem.
I've got to implement an intranet application for a bunch of different user groups. Until now i've used windows authenthication which was very simple to implement. My problems arise when it comes to authorizing usergroups for special application functionalities.
Using [Authorize(Users = "DOMAIN\\USER")] works great but due to that i have no access to the active directory managament, it is impossible to me to configure rolemanagement in the way I need it for my application.
What I'd like to do is defining custom roles and memberships in addition to the ones that are defined within the active directory (is such an extension possible? e.g. by implementing an own membershipprovider?).
What do you think is the best solution for my problem. Do I really have to implement a complex mixed mode authentication with forms authentication in addition to windows authentication?
Used Technologies:
MS SQL Server 2008
MS VS 2010
ASP.NET MVC 3 - Razor View Engine
Telerik Extensions for ASP.NET MVC
IIS 7 on Windows Server 2008
EDIT (final solution thanks to the help of dougajmcdonald):
After pointing me to use a custom IPrincipal implementation I've found some solutions here and here. Putting everything together I came to the following solution:
1.Create a custom principal implementation:
public class MyPrincipal: WindowsPrincipal
{
List<string> _roles;
public MyPrincipal(WindowsIdentity identity) : base(identity) {
// fill roles with a sample string just to test if it works
_roles = new List<string>{"someTestRole"};
// TODO: Get roles for the identity out of a custom DB table
}
public override bool IsInRole(string role)
{
if (base.IsInRole(role) || _roles.Contains(role))
{
return true;
}
else
{
return false;
}
}
}
2.Integrate my custom principal implementation into the application through extending the "Global.asax.cs" file:
protected void Application_AuthenticateRequest(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (Request.IsAuthenticated)
{
WindowsIdentity wi = (WindowsIdentity)HttpContext.Current.User.Identity;
MyPrincipal mp = new MyPrincipal(wi);
HttpContext.Current.User = mp;
}
}
3.Use my custom roles for authorization in my application
public class HomeController : Controller
{
[Authorize(Roles= "someTestRole")]
public ActionResult Index()
{
ViewBag.Message = "Welcome to ASP.NET MVC!";
return View();
}
}
It works!!! yeah!
I'm not sure if this still applies in MVC, but in Webforms one way to do this would be as follows:
Create a new IPrincipal implementation perhaps extending WindowsPrincipal
In this class, give it a collection of roles (your own custom roles)
Populate those roles, by perhaps getting them from the DB.
Override IsInRole to return true if the role provided is EITHER true from the base call (WindowsAuthentication/Role) OR from your own custom role collection.
This way you can still hook into Principal.IsInRole("MyRole") and also the principal [PrincipalPermission()] annotation.
Hope it helps.
EDIT in answer to q's:
To integrate the principal into the authorisation you need to write your own method for OnAuthenticate in the global.asax for the type of authentication, so I would guess for you, something like this:
void WindowsAuthentication_OnAuthenticate(object sender, WindowsAuthenticationEventArgs e)
{
// ensure we have a name and made it through authentication
if (e.Identity != null && e.Identity.IsAuthenticated)
{
//create your principal, pass in the identity so you know what permissions are tied to
MyCustomePrincipal opPrincipal = new MyCustomePrincipal(e.Identity);
//assign your principal to the HttpContext.Current.User, or perhaps Thread.Current
HttpContext.Current.User = opPrincipal;
}
}
I believe Authorize came in at a later date to the PrincipalPermission, but I'm not too sure as to when/why of the differences I'm afraid :( - sorry!

In Asp.Net MVC 2 is there a better way to return 401 status codes without getting an auth redirect

I have a portion of my site that has a lightweight xml/json REST API. Most of my site is behind forms auth but only some of my API actions require authentication.
I have a custom AuthorizeAttribute for my API that I use to check for certain permissions and when it fails it results in a 401. All is good, except since I'm using forms auth, Asp.net conveniently converts that into a 302 redirect to my login page.
I've seen some previous questions that seem a bit hackish to either return a 403 instead or to put some logic in the global.asax protected void Application_EndRequest()
that will essentially convert 302 to 401 where it meets whatever criteria.
Previous Question
Previous Question 2
What I'm doing now is sort of like one of the questions, but instead of checking the Application_EndRequest() for a 302 I make my authorize attribute return 666 which indicates to me that I need to set this to a 401.
Here is my code:
protected void Application_EndRequest()
{
if (Context.Response.StatusCode == MyAuthAttribute.AUTHORIZATION_FAILED_STATUS)
{
//check for 666 - status code of hidden 401
Context.Response.StatusCode = 401;
}
}
Even though this works, my question is there something in Asp.net MVC 2 that would prevent me from having to do this? Or, in general is there a better way? I would think this would come up a lot for anyone doing REST api's or just people that do ajax requests in their controllers. The last thing you want is to do a request and get the content of a login page instead of json.
How about decorating your controller/actions with a custom filter:
[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Method | AttributeTargets.Class, Inherited = true, AllowMultiple = true)]
public class RequiresAuthenticationAttribute : FilterAttribute, IAuthorizationFilter
{
public void OnAuthorization(AuthorizationContext filterContext)
{
var user = filterContext.HttpContext.User;
if (!user.Identity.IsAuthenticated)
{
filterContext.HttpContext.Response.StatusCode = 401;
filterContext.HttpContext.Response.End();
}
}
}
and in your controller:
public class HomeController : Controller
{
public ActionResult Index()
{
return View();
}
[RequiresAuthentication]
public ActionResult AuthenticatedIndex()
{
return View();
}
}
Another way of doing this is to implement a custom ActionResult. In my case, I wanted one anyway, since I wanted a simple way of sending data with custom headers and response codes (for a REST API.) I found the idea of doing a DelegatingActionResult and simply added to it a call to Response.End(). Here's the result:
public class DelegatingActionResult : ActionResult
{
public override void ExecuteResult(ControllerContext context)
{
if (context == null)
throw new ArgumentNullException("context");
Command(context);
// prevent ASP.Net from hijacking our headers
context.HttpContext.Response.End();
}
private readonly Action<ControllerContext> Command;
public DelegatingActionResult(Action<ControllerContext> command)
{
if (command == null)
throw new ArgumentNullException("command");
Command = command;
}
}
The simplest and cleanest solution I've found for this is to register a callback with the jQuery.ajaxSuccess() event and check for the "X-AspNetMvc-Version" response header.
Every jQuery Ajax request in my app is handled by Mvc so if the header is missing I know my request has been redirected to the login page, and I simply reload the page for a top-level redirect:
$(document).ajaxSuccess(function(event, XMLHttpRequest, ajaxOptions) {
// if request returns non MVC page reload because this means the user
// session has expired
var mvcHeaderName = "X-AspNetMvc-Version";
var mvcHeaderValue = XMLHttpRequest.getResponseHeader(mvcHeaderName);
if (!mvcHeaderValue) {
location.reload();
}
});
The page reload may cause some Javascript errors (depending on what you're doing with the Ajax response) but in most cases where debugging is off the user will never see these.
If you don't want to use the built-in header I'm sure you could easily add a custom one and follow the same pattern.
TurnOffTheRedirectionAtIIS
From MSDN, This article explains how to avoid the redirection of 401 responses : ).
Citing:
Using the IIS Manager, right-click the
WinLogin.aspx file, click Properties,
and then go to the Custom Errors tab
to Edit the various 401 errors and
assign a custom redirection.
Unfortunately, this redirection must
be a static file—it will not process
an ASP.NET page. My solution is to
redirect to a static Redirect401.htm
file, with the full physical path,
which contains javascript, or a
meta-tag, to redirect to the real
ASP.NET logon form, named
WebLogin.aspx. Note that you lose the
original ReturnUrl in these
redirections, since the IIS error
redirection required a static html
file with nothing dynamic, so you will
have to handle this later.
Hope it helps you.
I'm still using the end request technique, so I thought I would make that the answer, but really
either of the options listed here are generally what I would say are the best answers so far.
protected void Application_EndRequest()
{
if (Context.Response.StatusCode == MyAuthAttribute.AUTHORIZATION_FAILED_STATUS)
{
//check for 666 - status code of hidden 401
Context.Response.StatusCode = 401;
}
}

Why is HttpContext.Request.Url not matching what's in the address bar?

Ok, so I want to force https/ssl on parts of my ASP.NET MVC site. Found lots of great sources including an ActionFilter here: http://blog.tylergarlick.com/index.php/2009/07/mvc-redirect-to-http-and-https/
Whenever I enable the ActionFilter however I end up in a redirect loop. The problem is that if I type https://www.mysite.com/ into the address bar, request.url is always equal to http://www.mysite.com/.
The code for the action filter is below and to my knowledge I'm not doing any url rewriting, redirecting, custom routing or modifying the url beyond the standard setup. Are there any common/uncommon reasons why this might be happening and/or any workarounds or fixes? The site is currently hosted at NetworkSolutions - is there a chance it's related to IIS configuration? Any assistance would be much appreciated.
public class RedirectToHttps : ActionFilterAttribute
{
public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
{
// Helpers just so I don’t have to type so much
var request = filterContext.HttpContext.Request;
var response = filterContext.HttpContext.Response;
// Make sure we’re in https or local
if (!request.IsSecureConnection && !request.IsLocal)
{
string redirectUrl = request.Url.ToString().Replace("http:", "https:");
response.Redirect(redirectUrl);
}
base.OnActionExecuting(filterContext);
}
}
Even though you're not doing any explicit URL rewriting, it is done by the ASP.NET MVC engine.
You can probably retrieve the original URL with HttpContext.Request.RawUrl

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