Add Windows Authentication for ASP.NET MVC Web Application

As my first "sizable" project, I got to work on .NET with C# for the first time. This project was meant to be used by the company employees. So, authenticating users based on their intranet domain credentials was a requirement. To achieve this,i used Windows Authentication with IIS(Internet Information Services) and .NET . In this post, I'll describe how to do this step by step. I'll be using IIS 6 and Visual Studio 2012 for the explanations.

First things first, you need to setup IIS  in your Windows machine. To do so, go to Control Panel > Programs and Features. and select Turn Windows Features on or off. Then tick the checkbox for Internet Information Services and click OK.

Then create a new ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Application in VS2012. If you want a basic application, you can do that, or just create a "Internet Application" to proceed with. 

Go to the solution's main project and open the Web.config file. in that, find the tag with the name system.web. Now, create a new tag "authentication" inside the scope of system.web. Add an attribute to the newly added tag, mode="Windows".

NOTE : You may already have an authentication tag in your web.config file. In that case,just change the mode into Windows and comment out or remove any <form .... /> kind of tags if you have any.

Now, open IIS Manager from the programs. You may see something like this;

click on the Application Pools, and you may see the list of application pools/environments you have there.if you don't have any, click Add Application Pool on the upper right corner and choose the .NET version you use(in my case, it's v4.0 ). If You don't see your version in the list, you probably have to register your .NET version with IIS. To do this, follow these steps;

• Open Command Prompt
• Change directory to "C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319"
  (use Framework instead of Framework64 if you have a 32bit OS)
• Type aspnet_regiis.exe -ir and press Enter(you can use -i if there are no other web sites in the IIS or IIS is freshly installed)

Now the version should be available. You can then right click on the Sites folder and add your .NET MVC Web Application as a new Web site.

Fill out the necessary details in Site Name and Content Directory sections, leave the rest intact. Select an app pool with a compatible .NET version. Give the path to your .NET project as the Physical Path.

Or, you can right click your project in the Visual Studio and go to Properties>Web. in Servers section, click on "Use Local IIS Web Server" and save. you'll be prompted to ask for permission to create a virtual directory,accept it.

Now,try to run your project by clicking the green arrow at the top panel, it probably contains your primary debugging option as in mine it is "Google Chrome".

When you run this for the first time, you may get some error like this(most probably if you created a Internet Application instead of Basic. i'm not so sure of it though);

Basically what happens is that we are directed to a "login.aspx" page even if we are not calling it at the beginning of the application( you can check that out in the project). The way i found out to resolve this was removing some ".dll" files from your References. Click on the References component and locate two dll files in there with names WebMatrix.WebData and WebMatrix.Data. select those and remove them.

Now you'll get some errors in your project. because we remove those 2 dll files, some of the user authentication processes can't run.so the auto generated Account class will give and error and the class InitialzeSimpleMembershipAttributes will also throw some errors. 

as we don't need any other authentication, we can delete those files as well. but for the time being, just comment out the lines which gives you errors and build your solution. Now it should build without any error and run your project again. This time, it will go to your Home page just fine(but without any authentication).

Ok,now it's time to add the magic to the application. Go to IIS again, click on the server icon and then select authentication icon from the panel.

After that, you should see a list like this;

if you don't have the options Windows Authentication or Basic Authentication, just go to "Add Programs and Features" and tick these options under IIS folder icon. Then right click on the Windows Authentication and make it enable.also make Anonymous Authentication disable.

after that, do this exactly same steps clicking your web site icon too(probably their settings are automatically changed to enable windows authentication. but check nonetheless). Refresh the server and restart the site by clicking on them and then selecting options on the rightmost panel. 

Now you should get a prompt before the homepage is displayed.(sorry i put a screen with mozilla, but chrome had already memorized my credentials and therefore didn't popup the login box)

And that's it! :D. Now you can provide more secure login mechanism to users without having to memorize an additional set of usernames and passwords!.

You can also get the logged in user's name. That might come in handy if you are providing services based on employee levels. So you can check out which user has logged in and provide only necessary services to him/her.

To get the user in your C# code, use;

string name=User.Identity.Name;

Or, in your cshtml code, use;

@User.Identity.Name

I used the above code snippet to display my domain name in the home page. the result was as follows.

Okay guys, it was kind of a lengthy post. Sorry about that. Try this and see if you can get this to work. Happy Coding!!! :D

Getting started with your internship!

Hi all, welcome to my blog, "The Internship"!.This post is specially dedicated to those who are actually starting their internship (Others can just sit tight and relax for a moment until the next post is up :) ).

So my dear friends, it's the start of a whole new era of your life. Hope you all sat at your interviews and passed with flying colors. Therefore, congratulations in the first place for a job well done!. Here's a few tips that might be helpful to you on the first day/ first few days of your life as an intern.

• Be early to work - Punctuality shows that you are a reliable person. It's nice if you can do this as a practice rather than for few days.
• Greet everyone you meet at the workplace a Good Morning! - Everyone likes a cheery fellow ;) , and it's rather unpleasant not to do so.
• (for the first day) Wait in the reception until someone calls your name - Others are busy on their own duties, so you have to be patient.
• (for the first day) Listen carefully and follow the instructions exactly as they say regarding your registration and other administrative procedures - Yes, you can ask questions if something wasn't clear, but too many questions may reflect yourself as an inattentive character. And you don't need a black mark on your record on the first day,right?.
• (for the first day) After the initial paperwork, someone will lead you to your cubicle -  Memorize where it is exactly. Cause you may forget it out of excitement :P
• (for the first day) Greet(as in point 2) and Introduce yourself to other people on the floor. And get to know their names too - They may come to you and introduce themselves most of the time, but don't wait for them to act. Take initiative and be confident.
• Take a seat at your cubicle, turn your machine on and check if it works - They probably checked it just this morning. But electronic devices are so unreliable, so it's good if you can check it yourself. If it doesn't work, alert someone near you if you don't know where the System-Admin is. Otherwise, directly alert the System-Admin or other relevant people to take a look at it.
• For the first few days, you probably won't get any work to do. Don't waste that time! - You can always log onto Facebook at home. Use that time to do something more "technology" related stuff, learn some new things.
• When the lunch time comes, always try to take lunch with your team or at least another person - You are new here, getting to know others can be done during the lunch time. But be careful not to talk while you eat! ;)
• If you have any difficulty in understanding something,always ask someone out to help you - You are a Intern there, the word itself means that you don't know some things that they do. And most of them won't mind helping a fellow out in such times. Don't overdo it though. You are an IT person, that means learning yourself is part of the job description!
• Before you leave the place, check if the machine is properly shut-down and that monitors are also switched off - Contribute to save power!
• Make it a habit to say "Good Night" when you leave - others may not do the same, but stand out among them and show your class!

Okay then, i guess these guidelines will be generally helpful to you all to start your internships in a friendly and a good manner. Apart from these, there may be additional rules depending on your work environment also. Add those to this list and follow them also. Make yourself a good character to work with! :)