asp.net mvc forms authentication with no membership - asp.net-mvc

I have a following scenario: user logs in using google account and then I call FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie(name, true);. In my web.config I have
<authentication mode="Forms">
<forms cookieless="UseCookies" name=".someName" slidingExpiration="true" timeout="10080"/
</authentication>
And that's it, no membership provider, no dbo.aspnet_* tables. And that would be fine except sometimes (I don't know why) even when user doesn't close browser and sends requests periodically he becomes non-authenticated again. Can anyone explain why?
And what should I do to make authentication persistent? Would be great if solution wouldn't involve sql server as there isn't any.

Related

No User on Web Request

I have an ASP.Net MVC app, making use of Forms Authentication, with the following config:
<authentication mode="Forms">
<forms loginUrl="~/Account/LogOn" timeout="1440" slidingExpiration="true" />
</authentication>
The user count ranges between 20 and 40. Users log in and use the application without a problem...90% of the time.
However, we are finding that on a seemingly random basis, all users suddenly get logged out at the same time, and are presented with the Logon screen again.
The ELMAH log shows that the requests all still have their respective aspxauth cookies, yet the Request.User.Identity is unauthenticated, and has a blank Name.
Please advise where I can start looking as I am at my wits end on this.

ASP.NET Session Times out more earlier than expected

My current running configuration looks like this
<sessionState mode="InProc" timeout="30" />
<authentication mode="Forms">
<forms loginUrl="~/Account/Login" protection="All" name="Auth_Cookie" path="/" slidingExpiration="true" timeout="30" />
so I expect it to at least let the user be logged in for half an hour (if he does not make any requests)
but the session time out is hit like after 3-4 minutes if the user is not active. I mean global.asax's Session_End event is hit in this time and then in Application_PostAcquireRequestState event I check if any session variables are null and if they are then I sign the user out and redirect him to the log in page. I cant see what is the problem. Am I misunderstanding how this whole works ? what should I do in order to achieve what I want. Thanks in advance
From your comment:
I am constantly rebuilding the solution. is that be it ? can it be
clearing session variables ?
So basically you are recycling the application pool killing everything stored in the session. The biggest problem with ASP.NET Session is that by default it is stored in-memory:
<sessionState mode="InProc"
This has the drawback that if the application pool is restarted you will lose everything you stored in it. And don't forget that the application pool could be restarted by IIS at any time. For example after some period of inactivity or if some CPU/memory thresholds are reached. Also if you deploy your application in a web farm, InProc session simply won't work because the nodes of your farm cannot share session information.
All those drawbacks are the reasons why I never use ASP.NET Session in my web applications and simply put this in my web.config:
<sessionState mode="Off"

ASP.NET MVC Application Timeout Not Working

In my Web.config file, I have been trying to set the session timeout. I used the following code:
<configuration>
<system.web>
<sessionState timeout="1"></sessionState>
</system.web>
</configuration>
When I ran the app, the timeout was still set to the default 20 minutes. Trying to figure out why the settings are not applying. Please help! Thanks!
Don't be confused between ASP.NET session timeout (which is what you set) and Forms Authentication cookie timeout which is something entirely different and controlled by the <forms> tag:
<authentication mode="Forms">
<forms
loginUrl="/login"
timeout="1" />
</authentication>
ASP.NET session uses cookies to track users (it has nothing to do with authentication) and associate their unique id with a hashtable stored on the server. Forms authentication on the other hand is a means of tracking authenticated users in ASP.NET. It uses cookies but it is a different cookie than the ASP.NET session.

Session ID embedded in URL's is very annonying

I have an ASP.NET 4 site with url's having session string embedded in them. Due to this Google index the same page multiple times, all with different session id's. This is affecting my ranking. Earlier i also had the aspautodetectcookie string appended to the url. But i was able to remove it, however the session id embedded in the url remains a problem still.
If my url is http://www.somesite.com/ViewProduct.aspx?ID=12, it shows up like this http://www.somesite.com/S(yya4h4rf4gjh5eo4uazix2t055)X(1))/ViewProduct.aspx?ID=12. I want it to show like http://www.somesite.com/ViewProduct.aspx?ID=12 all the time.
Here are some settings in my web.config that may help you help me
<authentication mode="Forms">
<forms cookieless="UseCookies" loginUrl="~/AccessDenied.aspx" name="FORMAUTH" />
</authentication>
<sessionState mode="InProc" cookieless="false" timeout="15" />
<anonymousIdentification cookieless="AutoDetect" enabled="false" />
Now one user asked to change cookieless="true" to fix the problem. However in the artcle http://www.beansoftware.com/ASP.NET-Tutorials/Cookieless-Session-State.aspx the guy says that by adding cookieless = "true" session id 'will be' embedded in all page URLs.
Can anyone tell me how remove this session from the url - forever.
I am running on IIS 7 but do not have much access to the admin features.
If you set cookieless="false" that will solve the problem you are seeing with Google.
However this means that any browser, which doesn't support cookies, will get a new session per request. If you want more help, please tell us how you are using the sessions.

How do I time out a ASP.NET MVC logged in user?

How do I time out the session a ASP.NET MVC logged in user after about 5 mins or so forcing him to have to login in order to continue?
Since MVC is just like WebForms in that they both run on ASP.NET and assuming you're using Forms Authentication you can either:
Force the user to logout with FormsAuthenitcation.SignOut() which will clear their authentication cookie; or
Set the forms authentication timeout value (default is 30 minutes). For example:
<system.web>
<authentication mode="Forms">
<forms timeout="5"/>
</authentication>
</system.web>

Resources