Building Secure ASP.NET Applications - People Search Directory

How To:
Create GenericPrincipal Objects
with Forms Authentication
Applications that use Forms authentication will often want to use the
GenericPrincipal class (in conjunction with the FormsIdentity class), to create a
non-Windows specific authorization scheme, independent of a Windows domain.
For example, an application may:
● Use Forms authentication to obtain user credentials (user name and password).
● Validate the supplied credentials against a data store; for example, a database or
Microsoft® Active Directory® directory service.
●
Create GenericPrincipal and FormsIdentity objects based on values retrieved
from the data store. These may include a user’s role membership details.
● Use these objects to make authorization decisions.
This How To describes how to create a Forms-based Web application that authenticates
users and creates a custom Forms authentication ticket that contains user and
role information. It also shows you how to map this information into
GenericPrincipal and FormsIdentity objects and associate the new objects with the
HTTP Web request context, allowing them to be used for authorization logic within
your application.
This How To focuses on the construction of the GenericPrincipal and
FormsIdentity objects together with the processing of the forms authentication
ticket. For details about how to authenticate users against Active Directory and SQL
Server 2000, see the following related How Tos in the Reference section of this
guide:
● “How to use Forms authentication with Active Directory”
● “How to use Forms authentication with SQL Server 2000”