As a followup to this question, I'm wondering what's happening to my TempData.
Scenario 1:
user logs in
user provides email address
user receives email with validation code
user clicks on validation url
user is validated
success msg is displayed via TempData set in Validate action
Scenario 2:
user logs in
user provides email address
user logs out/times out
user receives email with validation code
user clicks on validation url
user is validated
success msg is not displayed via TempData set in Validate action
Now, I don't see a reason for the user to be logged in to validate. In Scenario 1, I put a "Success" message in TempData, and return RedirectToAction("Index"). Index action has an AuthorizeAttribute - if they're not logged in, they're redirected to the login screen (seperate controller).
I would like the login screen to display my message, but TempData appears to get cleared in this scenario. Am I misunderstanding the TempData lifecycle? Does it only apply to requests within the same controller?
The problem is that the AuthorizeAttribute is introducing another redirect into the cycle if the user is not logged in. You are redirecting the user to another action then, if the user is not logged in, the AuthorizeAttribute redirects them to the login page. TempData only lives over one request cycle, so the extra redirect (request) is emptying it and it isn't available on the login page.
You might consider just putting it in the Session directly instead of the TempData front-end to the Session. It should still be there as long as the Session lives.
[Authorize] introduces an extra redirect, which clears the TempData (Tvanfosson has explained the details). So for this to work, you can use a flag on the method you redirect to, for example
return RedirectToAction("Confirm", new { status = "Success!" });
(given that you have the following route and action method declared:)
routes.MapRoute("Confirmation",
"Account/Confirm/{status}",
new { controller = "Account", action = "Confirm", status = "" });
public ActionResult Confirm(string status)
{
return View(status);
}
Related
I have a requirement, where we allow a user to access a URL without logging in until a certain point.
For example:
OnlineBooking/Services. They can select the services, this populates the viewmodel and then brings up a confirm view OnlineBooking/Confirm allowing a user to add an email address etc. Which then generates a ViewModel.
My question is, how can I check the user exists, if it does. Redirect to the login view (Account Controller - Login Action), allow them to login, then redirect back to this action without losing the viewmodel in this action? This may not even be possible, if not how can I achieve this?
Thanks for any advice.
Example:
public async Task<IActionResult> Confirm(BookingViewModel bookingViewModel)
{
try
{
var matchedUser = await _userManager.FindByEmailAsync(bookingViewModel.Email);
if (matchedUser == null) //User does not have an existing account, so register them.
{
//This is fine
}
else
{
//Need to redirect to login, then back to here without losing the viewmodel
}
}
My question is, how can I check the user exists, if it does. Redirect to the login view (Account Controller - Login Action), allow them to login, then redirect back to this action without losing the viewmodel in this action
My personal preference would be to not even redirect the user. If you need them to login, popup a dialog asking them to login. Once the user is logged in (ajax), enable the button to continue..
Not sure if it's the best practice, but what about storing the View Model in the session before you redirect to the login page? Then at the beginning of the confirm action, check if that session variable exists.
Session variables can be set like this:
Session["MyViewModel"] = viewModel;
and retrieved like so:
MyViewModel viewModel = (MyViewModel)Session["MyViewModel"]
I have an ASP.Net MVC 4 Website. When I started this site I had little to no web programming experience, and I don't believe I set up all of it appropriately.
I have pages, such as Home, Login, Register, which I consider public,
pages like, VerifyPIN and AccountCreated, which I consider internal
and pages like Dashboard and Profile, which are private.
I feel public pages should be accessed by anonymous users, but Login and Register should not be accessible once a user logs in.
Internal pages I want to only be available upon server redirect and never through the browser, aka I don't want a user to be able to type in www.MySite.com/AccountCreated.
And private pages are for a logged in user only.
I feel I have private pages working fine, but I don't know how to limit access to the other pages as described above. Perhaps my notion to not allow a logged in user to access the log in page is miss-found.
My site is relatively small due to the ajax nature of the site. I use [AllowAnonymous] on all public pages but then a logged in user can still access those and I am not sure how to prevent that.
My questions are,
How can I prevent a user from accessing a page via the address bar (www.MySite.com/AccountCreated)
How can I prevent access to a [AllowAnonymous] page once a user has logged in.
EDIT
Is it normal to prevent logged on users from accessing certain anonymous pages, such as login?
You may always check if user is already logged in. If he did, he will be redirected to another page:
public ActionResult AccountCreated(some params)
{
if (Request.IsAuthenticated)
{
return RedirectToAction("Index")
}
else
{
// login logic here
}
}
You may also check it directly in View:
#if (Request.IsAuthenticated)
{
<span> You are already logged in</span>
}
else
{
//Login form here
}
well for your first question you can use the [Authorize] action filter.
For your other question, I guess you will have to write your own implementation. You will need to create a new IAuthorizationFilter and use it instead of [AllowAnonymous]
Just some ideas(didn't try them actually).
For question 1 - if AccountCreated is an action that means that the registration form actually POSTs to that URL - i.e. It is accessible from outside. I suggest you apply an HttpPost attribute to it so it will process only POST requests - there is not much you can do here
For point two you can do something like this in your action method
if (HttpContext.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated)
{
return RedirectToAction("Index", "Home");
}
else return View();
Just a thought, Signout user when a user goes to Login or Register page .
Hope you have not provided any link on private pages for a user to go to login or Register
page or check if user is authenticated redirect it to Home page, frankly you can not stop a user to write a URL and pressing the enter button, or just give a notification that You'll be logged out if you proceed to whatever page.
I have a problem with the user Login and Logout in an MVC3 application. Here's an example of my logout actions in my user controller:
public ActionResult Logout()
{
FormsService.SignOut();
Session.Clear();
return RedirectToAction("index", "home");
}
Once a user clicks Logout this action is called, it clears the session information and then the user is redirected to the index page.
On my index page I call a C# helper to display a message like this:
#section links { #Html.HdrLinks("Home", "", Context.User) }
Here's part of the code of the helper:
System.Security.Principal.IPrincipal user
if (user.Identity.IsAuthenticated)
{
return new MvcHtmlString("Welcome " + user.Identity.Name);
}
My problem is that when the index page displays IMMEDIATELY AFTER the logout it still shows the same session information. In other words it still shows a message like "Welcome John". Only AFTER I refresh the page in the browser does it correctly see that there user name is not set in the session.
Does anyone have any ideas on what I can do to make it so that after a logout and a redirect then the index page does not still think the user is logged in? For example is there some call other than RedirecToAction that I could execute that would help me.
UPDATE:
It would seem that when I change my code to the following then it does what I want and when it gets to display the index page then it does not show me I am still logged in. However I am not sure why this works.
FormsService.SignOut();
Session.Clear();
Session.Abandon();
return new RedirectToRouteResult(new RouteValueDictionary(new { controller = "Home", action = "Index" }));
It might be a cache problem. Have you checked that when your code ask a browser to make redirect then the browser really makes a new request to the index page? Just set a breakpoint at index action and take a look to Session property.
Here's a Link to another posting that describes the two things you need to do in more detail:
You need to clear the Session, Auth Cookie, and Session Cookie and return the cookies in the response.
You need to Invalidate the Cache on the Client so user's can't visit cached pages by hitting the browser's back button.
See the Link for details....
This is my application's current workflow for user registration.
register form ( GET /register )
submit the form ( POST /register )
after success, redirect route to "/registerSuccess"
in (GET /registerSuccess ) view, I want to show the message like "username has been registered successfully".
Controller Actions:
public ActionResult Register()
{
return View();
}
[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Register(string name, string password, string confirmPassword)
{
TempData["registered_user"] = name;
return RedirectToRoute("RegisterSuccess");
}
public ActionResult RegisterSuccess()
{
return View();
}
RegisterSuccess View
<h2><%: TempData["registered_user"] %> has been registered successfully.</h2>
It is working fine except the username is empty when user refresh the page (GET /registerSuccess).
Is it normal behavior in other applications? or Should I do something about it? :) (It is my pet project and requirements come from me :P )
update: Actually, there is one more step which is registered user required admin's approval. So, I can't let user log in after successful register. I'm currently using cookie-based FormsAuthentication to track logged in user.
I prefer to use PRG pattern rather than showing flash message in the submit form.
that is normal behaviour.. when the user 'refreshes' the page is requested directly not through your Register function so registered_user key is gone by then. When you do the initial registration you should use a session marker (say a cookie) to track a successfully logged in user.
Using cookies tutorial is a good place to start
If you were to use HTTP authentication (say Basic Auth) then the browser submits the username and password (in clear text for basic auth) with every request that sends out a 401 Unauthorized (see HTTP/1.0 Protocol)
Hmm...
Normally you should think of a SSO solution, that holds your User's authentication (token).
then you would just need to display the current authenticated user (as a completed registration normally logs in the user)
other solution would be, to add the user in the url, so that the success page has all parameters.
/registerSuccess/<username>
(and maybe check, that the logged in user is just registered, and is the same)
for your own fun project, i would do the second one. ist just plain simple.
I'm currently working on the user registration in my project. After the registration is done I wish to show some confirmation to the user. I decided to create another view. That's fine.
Now, if after the registration I just return the view like:
public class MyController : Controller
{
[AcceptVerbs (HttpVerbs.Post), ValidateAntiForgeryToken]
public ActionResult Registration (FormCollection form)
{
/* Some logic goes here */
return View ("ConfirmationView");
}
}
Everything is working as desired. No changed url in the title bar. But... If I click the refresh button, the browser will submit the data from the form again which I do not want.
Then I decided to create a separate action, but that means it will produce a new url in the address bar. I do not want the user to click refresh now because this view will not be able to sensibly display the confirmation information again. Is there any way to make an action not accessible directly? Or at least any way to determine whether it was called directly or by redirection? In the latter case I would just take the user away from that page to maybe the home page.
Any way to accomplish this?
So I found the solution myself.
One can use TempData to detect the repeated or external action calls.
public class MyController : Controller
{
[AcceptVerbs (HttpVerbs.Post), ValidateAntiForgeryToken]
public ActionResult Registration (FormCollection form)
{
/* Some logic goes here */
TempData["RedirectCall"] = true;
return RedirectToAction ("Confirmation");
}
[AcceptVerbs (HttpVerbs.Get)]
public ActionResult Confirmation ()
{
if (TempData["RedirectCall"] == null)
return RedirectToAction ("StartPage", "Home");
return View ();
}
}
Nice and simple. :)
One way to solve your problem is to attach a guid or similar type of "random" data to a user session, and check for a valid session when the page is requested. If there is none, you redirect to a page saying that this url is not available at the moment, and that the user will soon be redirected (and then redirect to home after 5 seconds or so using js).
Roughly it would work like this:
When the user is registered, a session cookie is created with for example a GUID. The GUID is also stored in a database table, in which you have one column for the UserID primary key and one for the GUID. You also create an authentication cookie, thus logging the user on to your site.
When all datacalls etc are done, the user has been successfully registered and so on, you redirect to the confirmation page.
When the confirmation page is loaded, the user is automatically logged on (because you created the authentication cookie in step 1). You can then check for a row in the UserID-GUID table corresponding to the logged on user.
a) If there is such a row, you delete the row, and display the confirmation page with all the information.
b) If there is no such row, you display the error message and redirect. As you deleted the row when you showed the message the first time, the user will not be able to access the confirmation page again.
Note: If you use this approach (or some other that makes the confirmation page available only once) you should make sure that it is clearly stated on the confirmation page that the user won't be able to access that page again.
if(Request.UrlReferrer == null)
{
return RedirectToAction("Index");
}