I am creating website (football, soccer) in ASP.NET MVC3 and I want have users (with additional information then user in default membership, these are ordinary visitors) and players which I think it is best thet they would inherit users and have some addional iformation as dress number, ... Players also could post articles, users can just comment articles. What is best way to do this? Should I use default membership provider or should I make my own or use some 3rd party solutions? And can you post some articles and tutorials for changing original provider or article for making own provider for asp.net MVC3? Or is it same as MVC2?
It is very easy to create your own Membership Provider. Just create class derived from MembershipProvider. And implement members which look into DB, for example (or any other data source).
public class YourMembershipClass: MembershipProvider
{
public override bool ValidateUser(string username, string password)
{
return YourDataLayer.ValidateUser(username, password);
}
public override MembershipUser GetUser(object providerUserKey, bool userIsOnline)
{
return YourDataLayer.GetSpecificUser(providerUserKey, userIsOnline);
}
// Implement the other methods as well
}
Then add your YourMembershipClass to web.config:
<membership defaultProvider="MlgMembership">
<providers>
<clear />
<add name="CustomMembership" type="YourMembershipClass" enablePasswordRetrieval="false" />
</providers>
</membership>
If you are looking to store profile type information e.g. first name, last name, job title etc. against each user then you should be able to use the Profile system built into ASP.NET Membership. If you are looking to store more identity related information then yes you will have to create some sort of custom membership provider. There is a good video on creating a custom provider on the ASP.NET website: http://www.asp.net/general/videos/how-do-i-create-a-custom-membership-provider
Regarding allowing different types of users to perform different actions you can use the Roles system built into ASP.NET Membership. You can tell your action methods to only allow calls from users in certain roles. For example if you had a PostArticle action method and you only wanted players to be able to access it you would have something like this:
[Authorize(Roles="Player")]
public ActionResult PostArtcile(){
return View();
}
The Authorize attribute tells MVC to only allow authenticated users in the "Player" role to call the action method. You'll still need to restrict the availability of a post article link in your front end but there are several ways to do that.
There is a great series of articles by Scott Mitchell which covers all things membership based: https://web.archive.org/web/20211020202857/http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/articles/120705-1.aspx
Have a look at this soccer Club Site asp.net starter kit.
I Advice you to:
Use Membership provider to just deal
with user registration and
authentication. And let it take care of user security stuffs (rest password, validate user ....)
Then use Roles to separate your
users to their roles ("Players,
normalUsers,..").
And NEVER use Profile provider
cause it cost so many traffic you
don't want and instead of you could
make your custom table in DataBase to
store your additional information.
Then you may use EF or any ORM to get
this information whenever you want.
Don't forget to use authorization attributes [Authorize(Roles="Players")]in your Controllers and Actions deppending on the Roles.
I would advise implementing your own membership provider, it means implementing only the bits you need and forms a foundation for all your user management.
The Membership provider is the same for WebForms and MVC, there are quite a few examples on SO and Google.
Related
I am new to MVC, but I have a good experience in C# Winforms, Database Designing and normalization.
I want to define a User and his roles dynamically, using MVC.
Detailed Description
There is an Organization with the Head Of Department(HOD).
There are several branch offices and each office have a Branch Head Officer Working under HOD.
Each Branch Officer has a power to Assign Different Accessibility to his employees. For Eg: A Cashier can also have an access to Generate Bills.
My Problems are:
HOD(Admin) Will Create A Branch Officer(BO).HOD Will Have Access To all the defined Actions in All the controller.
How BO Can create a User that can have access only to the "Controllers's Actions" defined by the BO , and What If the Second Level User Want to create another third level user
BO and his descendants will have access only to their Branch Office. They cannot see Any details of another Branch, but HOD can view any detail of any Branch. (I want this Authorization at Server Side to avoid Cross Site Scripts)
Please guide Me, How Can I Implement This Model of Multi Access Level And Dynamic Role Management?
I have searched a lot but Couldn't found anything that can help me. BTW This Project is Employee Management System that includes Payroll, Leave Management, Employee Service Book etc.
Thanks in advance.
Just for guidance not to be take as a 100% solution.
If you are using MVC 5 you can use ASP.NET Identity Core
There are two common authorization approaches that are based on Role and Claim.
This is role based authentication. So basically you create roles as per your requirement, then you assign those roles to users. So the user immediately gets all the access rights defined for that role.
In your database:
You will have a list of users in AspNetUsers table
List of Roles in AspNetRoles table --> Admin, Branch Manager, Manager etc
Then finally decorate your controller or action with [Authorize(Roles="Admin, etc")]
[Authorize(Roles = "Admin")]
public ActionResult TestMethod()
{
ViewBag.Message = "This View is designed for the Admin's";
return View();
}
Or Whole Controller
[Authorize(Roles = "Admin")]
public class TestController
{
}
So once those are in place you will have a create an action where the admin can assign roles to others. Branch Officer can assign roles to employees.
Useful link: http://www.dotnetcurry.com/aspnet-mvc/1102/aspnet-mvc-role-based-security
http://www.asp.net/identity/overview/getting-started/introduction-to-aspnet-identity
I am completely new to the use of claims in ASP.NETIdentity and want to get an idea of best practices in the use of Roles and/or Claims.
After all this reading, I still have questions like...
Q: Do we no longer use Roles?
Q: If so, why are Roles still offered?
Q: Should we only use Claims?
Q: Should we use Roles & Claims together?
My initial thought is that we "should" use them together. I see Claims as sub-categories to the Roles they support.
FOR EXAMPLE:
Role: Accounting
Claims: CanUpdateLedger, CanOnlyReadLedger, CanDeleteFromLedger
Q: Are they intended to be mutually exclusive?
Q: Or is it better to go Claims ONLY and "fully-qualify" you claims?
Q: So what are the best practices here?
EXAMPLE: Using Roles & Claims Together
Of course, you would have to write your own Attribute logic for this...
[Authorize(Roles="Accounting")]
[ClaimAuthorize(Permission="CanUpdateLedger")]
public ActionResult CreateAsset(Asset entity)
{
// Do stuff here
return View();
}
EXAMPLE: Fully-Qualifying Your Claims
[ClaimAuthorize(Permission="Accounting.Ledger.CanUpdate")]
public ActionResult CreateAsset(Asset entity)
{
// Do stuff here
return View();
}
A role is a symbolic category that collects together users who share the same levels of security privileges. Role-based authorization requires first identifying the user, then ascertaining the roles to which the user is assigned, and finally comparing those roles to the roles that are authorized to access a resource.
In contrast, a claim is not group based, rather it is identity based.
from Microsoft documentation:
When an identity is created it may be assigned one or more claims issued by a trusted party. A claim is a name value pair that represents what the subject is, not what the subject can do.
A security check can later determine the right to access a resource based on the value of one or more claims.
You can use both in concert, or use one type in some situations and the other in other situations. It mostly depends on the inter-operation with other systems and your management strategy. For example, it might be easier for a manager to manage a list of users assigned to a role than it is to manage who has a specific Claim assigned. Claims can be very useful in a RESTful scenario where you can assign a claim to a client, and the client can then present the claim for authorization rather than passing the Username and Password for every request.
As #Claies perfectly explained, claims could be a more descriptive and is a deep kind of role. I think about them as your role's ids. I have a gym Id, so I belong to the members role. I am also in the kickboxing lessons, so I have a kickboxing Id claim for them. My application would need the declaration of a new role to fit my membership rights. Instead, I have ids for each group class that I belong to, instead of lots of new membership types. That is why claims fit better for me.
There is a a great explanation video of Barry Dorrans, talking about the advantage of using claims over roles. He also states that roles, are still in .NET for backward compatibility. The video is very informative about the way claims, roles, policies, authorization and authentication works.
Or check a related session shared by Lafi
Having used various authentication and authorisation techniques over decades, my current MVC application uses the following methodology.
Claims are used for all authorisation. Users are assigned one role (multiple roles are possible but I do not need this) - more below.
As is common practice, A ClaimsAuthorize attribute class is used. Since most controller actions are CRUD, I have a routine in the code-first database generation that iterates all controller actions and creates claim types for each controller action attribute of Read/Edit/Create/Delete. E.g. from,
[ClaimsAuthorize("SomeController", "Edit")]
[HttpPost]
For use at in an MVC View, a base controller class presents view bag items
protected override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
{
// get user claims
var user = filterContext.HttpContext.User as System.Security.Claims.ClaimsPrincipal;
if (user != null)
{
// Get all user claims on this controller. In this controler base class, [this] still gets the descendant instance type, hence name
List<Claim> claims = user.Claims.Where(c => c.Type == this.GetType().Name).ToList();
// set Viewbag with default authorisations on this controller
ViewBag.ClaimRead = claims.Any(c => c.Value == "Read");
ViewBag.ClaimEdit = claims.Any(c => c.Value == "Edit");
ViewBag.ClaimCreate = claims.Any(c => c.Value == "Create");
ViewBag.ClaimDelete = claims.Any(c => c.Value == "Delete");
}
base.OnActionExecuting(filterContext);
}
For website menus and other non-controller actions, I have other claims. E.g. whether a user can view a particular monetary field.
bool UserHasSpecificClaim(string claimType, string claimValue)
{
// get user claims
var user = this.HttpContext.User as System.Security.Claims.ClaimsPrincipal;
if (user != null)
{
// Get the specific claim if any
return user.Claims.Any(c => c.Type == claimType && c.Value == claimValue);
}
return false;
}
public bool UserHasTradePricesReadClaim
{
get
{
return UserHasSpecificClaim("TradePrices", "Read");
}
}
So where do Roles fit in?
I have a table that links a Role to a (default) set of claims. When setting user authorisation, the default is to give the user the claims of their role. Each user can have more or less claims than the default. To make editing simple, the claims list is show by controller and actions (in a row), with other claims then listed. Buttons are used with a bit of Javascript to select a set of actions to minimise the "clicking" required to select claims. On Save, the users claims are deleted and all of the selected claims are added. The web application loads claims only once, so any changes must prompt a reload within this static data.
Managers can therefore select which claims are in each role and which claims a user has after setting them to a role and those default claims. The system has only a small number of users so managing this data is straightforward
To understand the difference between Roles and Claims you must face the limitation of roles and feel how claims come over these issues, so let me give you 2 scenarios to recognize the power of claims where role can't resolve these issues :
1- Your site has two modules (pages, service ..etc) the first module for children (under 18 years old) the other for adults (over 18 years old)
your user identity has a birthday claim
You need to create a policy on this claim so the authorization for each module will be given on this value and if the age of the user is over 18 years then he can go to the adult module and not before this age.
Role is Boolean data type you can have or not have the role, it doesn't have multi values.
2- Your site has role user and you want to prevent access of users to make some maintenance without changing the code.
In claims, you can create an UnderConstrain policy that if true the user can't view the page give property authorize for role user.
At the time of writing this answer we were at '.NET 5.0' with '.NET 6.0' just around the corner. And this is my understanding of what I've seen:
Q: Do we no longer use Roles?
Yep, you're not supposed to use Roles any longer (at least not the way you did it in the previous frameworks.
Q: If so, why are Roles still offered?
To make upgrading projects easier/faster?
Q: Should we only use Claims?
yes. But be sure to check out the video posted here in the answer by #Jonathan Ramos.
Q: Should we use Roles & Claims together?
No, but you can put a role into a claim ofcourse, but be sure to upgrade your project to use Claims only.
And you should not have to write you're own attributes, you should use policy for that, as it's the way of the newer framework. If you need you're own attributes you're "doing it wrong", just create your own Requirement(handler) that's what the whole 'new' policy is all about.
In the current framework the attribute ClaimAuthorize is not even available anymore.
I am building an ASP.net MVC 4 application.
In the past I have used the [Authorize] attribute to authorize users according to their role(s).
However, I now need to a more flexible solution where role authorization can be changed by altering the database rather than changing the source code.
Can anyone recommend a suitable way to do this?
I have looked into overriding the OnAuthorize method but apparently this is not recommended due to issues with output caching.
You can do something like this, we have been using this in our application
[AttributeUsageAttribute
(AttributeTargets.Class | AttributeTargets.Struct |
AttributeTargets.Constructor | AttributeTargets.Method, Inherited = false)]
public class RequirePermissionsAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute, IAuthorizationFilter
{
// Use inbuilt methods
//OnAuthorization
//HandleUnauthorizedRequest
//OnCacheAuthorization
}
[RequirePermissions(PermissionItems.ViewThisPage)]
public ActionResult Index()
{
}
Not sure if I understood your requirement correctly, but you could have two levels of roles, with a data model something like:
User -in-> Role -has-> Permission
With m-n relationships between Users and Roles, and between Roles and Permissions.
If you do this, your permissions can be quite fine-grained and stable, while roles can be coarse-grained and flexibly mapped to sets of permissions.
One way to implement this is to simply write a custom RoleProvider that does the join Users-Roles-Permissions and returns the permissions as application roles.
If you do this, you can use the standard Authorize attribute, specifying one of your fine-grained permission names rather than a coarse-grained role name, e.g.:
[Authorize(Permissions.ViewCustomers)]
I develop a web project. I use Asp.Net MVC, Entity Framework. I will have roles for users in admin panel. Usrs makes processes according to their roles. I want to use design patterns for this projects. Which type of a pattern do I use for this role authorisation? Any idea?
Thanks in advance.
Easiest way to implement role management is using ASP.NET membership provider.
You then have two ways of protecting actions based on roles.
If you want to ensure that only certain roles can execute an action method, you would use the Authorize attribute and define the list of allowed roles:
[Authorize(Roles = "Admin, Manager")]
public ActionResult AdministratorsOnly()
{
return View();
}
If you need to hide functionality on the views, you can use the User.IsInRole() method to check if the currently logged in user has that role:
if(User.IsInRole("Admin"))
{
Delete account
}
While I'm well used to using the standard ASP.Net Membership Provider for new MVC web applications, I've been getting a kick out of using RavenDb lately but I still don't believe I have a grasp on the best practice for implementing user authentication and role authorisation.
The code I have replaced my Register and Logon methods with in the AccountController looks like the following:
[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Register(RegisterModel model)
{
if (ModelState.IsValid)
{
using (IDocumentSession Session = DataDocumentStore.Instance.OpenSession())
{
Session.Store(new AuthenticationUser
{
Name = Email,
Id = String.Format("Raven/Users/{0}", Name),
AllowedDatabases = new[] { "*" }
}.SetPassword(Password));
Session.SaveChanges();
FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie(model.UserName, createPersistentCookie: false);
// ...etc. etc.
[HttpPost]
public JsonResult JsonLogOn(LogOnModel model, string returnUrl)
{
if (ModelState.IsValid)
{
using (IDocumentSession Session = DataDocumentStore.Instance.OpenSession())
{
book Ok = Session.Load<AuthenticationUser>(String.Format("Raven/Users/{0}", Username)).ValidatePassword(Password);
FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie(model.UserName, model.RememberMe);
// etc...
I've seen the RavenDb Membership Provider code that a number of people have referenced in similar posts or questions, but there also seems to be a number of people who consider this to be over the top and leveraging an inefficient API for a data store that doesn't need most of what's provided within it.
So what is the best architectural / design strategy for RavenDb authentication (not for OAuth, but Forms Authentication) and am I barking up the right tree?
I think there are a few parts to this problem. First, from the MVC project's perspective, you really want to use something that will work with the AuthorizationAttribute. This actually does not require using a MembershipProvider per se, but rather stuffing an appropriate IPrincipal into HttpContext.Current.User as that is what those attributes look at to authorize things.
From a HTTP perspective, taking advantage of the existing forms authentication infrastructure also makes a ton of sense -- it solves most of the sticky security issues you really should not solve yourself and it is very flexible in terms of working with what you provide.
From there you get to the gist of the question -- how you want to back your authentication system from a data perspective. I think that is a very tactical call -- some apps it might make sense to just use a MembershipProvider style model. But if I had an app that was very user centric where I was storing lots of user data I would probably consider rolling a custom user store based around my requirements. If you are using the Authentication bundle you could glom onto that to some extent as well. But I don't think there is a hard and fast rule at this point -- do what makes sense for your app.
One thing you should not do is use the AuthenticationUser like above -- that is meant for database system users. In SQL Server terms that would be like making every user in your app a SQL user and then authenticating against that. Which is how some old intranet products used to work but the world has moved past that now.