Fully configured ASP.NET Membership Website Template

• Download AspNetMembershipTemplate.zip - 26.31 KB

Introduction 

The attached Visual Studio template is used to instantly create a website project that contains all the boiler plate code usually tedious to development (login/logout, displaying messages, Master page, CSS, JavaScript, error handling, changing passwords, etc...). This article provides a fully configured starting point for website project development with all that boiler plate code already completed.

Background

The starting point in an application usually takes the longest getting the application configured properly to display messages in a uniform way, or to get the login features working. In order to speed up this portion of the application development process, I built this application template for use with Visual Studio 2008 to provide a stepping stone for all further website development.

If you don't know about Visual Studio project and item templates, surf over to here for an overview before continuing on. If you don't know about Base Pages and their uses, please surf over to here for an overview before continuing on. If you don't know about Master Pages and their uses, please surf over to here for an overview before continuing on.

Using the code

Place the attached .zip file into your Project Templates folder associated with Visual Studio 2008. The default location is {drive}:\...\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Templates\ProjectTemplates. If you don't know where yours is, then open Visual Studio -> Tools -> Options -> Projects and Solutions, and look at the "user project templates location" textbox to see where Visual Studio is looking for custom project templates.

After placing the .zip file in your Project Templates folder, open Visual Studio 2008 and click File-> New Website. Name your website and click OK. A new website project will be in your solution, and it will contain the following items different than a normal website project:

• Admin/{Default.aspx, web.config}
• App_Code/{BasePage.cs, BaseMasterPage.cs}
• App_Data/Web.sitemap
• DefaultMaster.master
• Global.asax
• Login.aspx
• Logout.aspx
• web.config
• Stylesheets/stylesheet.css
• Scripts/JScript.js
• Images/{Warning.gif, Error.gif, Information.gif}

Plus the normal Default.aspx but it is different in that it references the DefaultMaster.master as its Master page.

Go to the web.config file and change the connection string to point to a valid database that contains the ASP.NET membership tables. Confirm that the applicationName="" attribute that the membership and role sections of the web.config file points to are named correctly.

<roleManager enabled="true">
  <providers>

    <clear />
    <add name="AspNetSqlRoleProvider" 
         type="System.Web.Security.SqlRoleProvider, System.Web, 
               Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, 
               PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"         
         connectionStringName="appNameConnectionString" 
         applicationName="appName" />

  </providers>
</roleManager>
<membership>
  <providers>
    <clear />
      <add name="AspNetSqlMembershipProvider"

           type="System.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProvider, System.Web, 
                 Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"
           connectionStringName="appNameConnectionString"
           ...
           applicationName="appName" .../>
      </providers>

    </membership>

Add your header image to the Images folder. On the DefaultMaster.master page, add the ImageUrl="" attribute to the imgHeader image control to point to your header image.

Ensure the Regular Expression for passwords is correct in the web.config. The current expression requires a password between 8 and 15 characters, and requires the use of:

1. a number (?=.*\d)
2. a lower case letter (?=.*[a-z])
3. an uppercase letter (?=.*[A-Z])
4. and a special symbol (?=.*[!@#$%^&*()_+])

<membership>

  <providers>
    <add ... passwordStrengthRegularExpression="" />
    <appSettings>
    ...
    <add key="PasswordRegEx" 
         value="(?=^.{8,15}$)
                (?=.*\d)(?=.*[a-z])(?=.*[A-Z])(?=.*[!@#$%^&amp;*()_+])
                (?!.*\s).*$"/>

  </appSettings>

Develop some way to log errors that occur in the application, and place that code in the Global.asax Application_Error method and the BasePage.HandleException(Exception ex) method:

public void HandleException(Exception ex)
{
    if (ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["Environment"] == "Development")
    {
        Master.ErrorMessage = ex.Message;
    }
    else
    {
        Master.ErrorMessage = "An unexpected error has occured in" + 
           "the application. If it continues, please contact the administrator.";
    }
    // TODO Log the exception somehow, either with
    // Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Logging or some other mechanism
}

void Application_Error(object sender, EventArgs e) 
{
    // Code that runs when an unhandled error occurs

    //get reference to the source of the exception chain
    Exception lastError = Server.GetLastError();
    Exception ex;
    if (lastError.InnerException != null)
        ex = lastError.InnerException;
    else
        ex = lastError.GetBaseException();
    // TODO: Log the error somehow.
}

User Administration

Inside the Admin/Default.aspx page, there is a basic user administration piece that would allow someone with the Admin role to Approve/Unapprove, Unlock, and Add/Remove roles to users in the system.

Points of interest

Message are passed to the user via code-behind calls to:

• base.InformationMessage = "My Information Message";
• base.ErrorMessage = "My Error Message";
• base.WarningMessage = "My Warning Message";

Although the "base." syntax is not necessary, I always place it so any future developer knows that some base page contains the definition for these properties and not the current page.

These message sections are initially invisible, and become visible when a string message passed to them (see BaseMasterPage.ErrorMessage for more details) sets EnableViewState = false, so they will disappear when the application does a postback.

The Master page utilizes the CodeFileBaseClass="BaseMasterPage" so the BaseMasterPage.cs file could expose the Labels and divs containing them via properties so a page could reference them.

<%@ Master Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" 
    Inherits="DefaultMaster" CodeFile="~/DefaultMaster.Master.cs"
    CodeFileBaseClass="BaseMasterPage" %>

The BasePage class hides the Page.Master property and casts the MasterPage as a BaseMasterPage so all a page has to reference is its ErrorMessage property.

public new BaseMasterPage Master { get { return (BaseMasterPage)base.Master; } }

public string ErrorMessage
{
  set { Master.ErrorMessage = value; }
}

Adding Just ASP.NET Membership and Roles Tables to a Database

Adding just the ASP.NET Membership tables to the database is easy to do, but requires you to use the command line of the aspnet_regsql.exe file. Look here for more information on using just the features you want for the ASP.NET membership.

History   

• June 26^th, 2009 - Initial post.
• July 7^th, 2009 - Added User Admin section

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Error: Could not load file or assembly 'System.Data.Entity' Behzad Ebrahimi 19:52 24 Aug '09   Could not load file or assembly 'System.Data.Entity, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Re: Error: Could not load file or assembly 'System.Data.Entity' Stephen Inglish 10:32 26 Aug '09   This was built using the default web.config for .NET Framework 3.5. Simply edit the web.config file to remove those assembly references, or upgrade to .NET Framework 3.5 on your machine. <compilation debug="true"> <assemblies> ... <add assembly="System.Data.Entity, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089" /> <add assembly="System.Data.Entity.Design, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089" /> <add assembly="System.Web.Entity, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089" /> ... </assemblies> Stephen Inglish Consultant Sogeti USA MCPD: Windows Developer MCPD: Web Developer MCPD: Enterprise Developer Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Dude, awesome. martenc 15:54 15 Jul '09   Thanks for the contribution! I've done this a about 19 times in the past ...your template saved me about 3 hours. Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Re: Dude, awesome. Stephen Inglish 7:15 16 Jul '09   Glad to hear it. Stephen Inglish Consultant Sogeti USA MCPD: Windows Developer MCPD: Web Developer MCPD: Enterprise Developer Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Just starting C# - Moving from vbscript Steve Krile 2:55 14 Jul '09   I've been coding in Visual Basic forever and am just now moving to C#. This template seems an excellent place to start. However... I've created a new project and imported all the files in Visual Studio 2005, but get a list of errors - actually it's just two errors repeated: Error 64 The type or namespace name 'Linq' does not exist in the namespace 'System' (are you missing an assembly reference?) C:\Documents and Settings\skril\Desktop\MembershipTemplate\MembershipTemplate\Logout.aspx.cs 3 14 MembershipTemplate Error 63 The type or namespace name 'BasePage' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?) C:\Documents and Settings\skril\Desktop\MembershipTemplate\MembershipTemplate\Default.aspx.cs 7 33 MembershipTemplate Any thoughts on how to address these? I looked through my references, and Linq does not exist in them. I tried adding: System.Data.linq but that didn't make the error go away. Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Re: Just starting C# - Moving from vbscript Stephen Inglish 7:14 16 Jul '09   LINQ isn't used in the project template, so you can delete any references to it in the using statements inside the application to get it to compile for you. They are placed there by default with the Visual Studio 2008 item templates I used. Visual Studio 2005 doesn't have LINQ support out of the box. Go to here to get the CTP for LINQ with that version of Visual Studio 2005. You might consider downloading the Visual Studio 2008 Express version if you are playing around, as it has the most recent advances of the C# language built into the download. Stephen Inglish Consultant Sogeti USA MCPD: Windows Developer MCPD: Web Developer MCPD: Enterprise Developer Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Re: Just starting C# - Moving from vbscript Steve Krile 7:17 16 Jul '09   Well, I've heard bad things about LINQ's future. Anyway, I use 2005 at work, but am running Vista Ultimate with 2008 at home. This conversion to C# is a personal switch Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Re: Just starting C# - Moving from vbscript Stephen Inglish 3:16 17 Jul '09   There are multiple types of LINQ essentially... LINQ the syntax, LINQ to SQL, LINQ to Objects, LINQ to XML, LINQ to ... LINQ is a C# syntax that can be used to filter/select data. It is not going away because it is now part of C#. You or your company may not see the benefits it can provide in certain situations, and that is fine, but I would recommend giving it a fair shake, at least LINQ to Objects, because that can be used anywhere in your applications for more terse code. Check out my blog[^] for an example of using LINQ to Entities to do Server Side Paging in 2 lines, rather than use an ObjectDataSource and it's special methods, or manually writing a SQL Stored Procedure using the Common Table Expressions. Stephen Inglish Consultant Sogeti USA MCPD: Windows Developer MCPD: Web Developer MCPD: Enterprise Developer Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink 4.00/5 (1 vote) Thanks for this Template musacj 3:19 2 Jul '09   I needed something like this; Thanks again Mr MC; The Only One Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Good Job! Moim Hossain 11:44 26 Jun '09   You got my 5. I am hoping that this will become very handy.. Moim Hossain R&D Project Manager BlueCielo ECM Solutions BV Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink 2.00/5 (2 votes)

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