4

I've read through a number of SO questions on this topic, but all seem to be dealing with where you should put this call.

My problem is different: I have already done the WebSecurity.InitializeDatabaseConnection() call, and have set breakpoints so I know it's been executed. But I still get the invalid operation exception saying I have to call it.

Unlike most of the other questions which are encoutering it in an MVC controller action, I'm encountering it an HttpModule I have written to accomplish Authentication for a REST WebAPI controller. The Init call contains the WebSecurity.InitializeDatabaseConnection call. The OnAuthenticationRequest method then extracts username and password information from the request's Authorization header, and calls the ValidateUser method of the SimpleMembershipProvider. This is where I get the exception

You must call the WebSecurity.InitializeDatabaseConnection method before you call any other method of theWebSecurityclass.

So

a) why am I getting this exception when I have already fulfilled the conditions not to get it.
b) what can be done about it?

YasirA
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Dave Hanna
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    Can you post the full stack trace of the exception? – Eilon Mar 31 '13 at 03:49
  • I've changed the code so it doesn't happen anymore, but there wasn't much to the stack trace. The issue was that I was trying to create my own instance of the SimpleMembershipProvider, and THAT one never was initialized. WebSecurity creates its own instance, and that's the one that it initalizes. I changed my code so that, instead of creating its own instance, it just uses the static instance returned by Membership.Provider, and the error went away. I still call InitializeDatabaseConnection in the HttpModule.Init() method. – Dave Hanna Mar 31 '13 at 14:14

2 Answers2

1

After hours of facing the same problem and setting many many breakpoints I found a solution for my environment, I hope others can benefit from it:

inside Folder App_Start

public class FilterConfig
{
  public static void RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilterCollection filters)
  {
    var attr=new InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute();
    // here is the important part
    attr.OnActionExecuting(new ActionExecutingContext());
    filters.Add(attr);
  }
}

Background: In my app I have 2 views:

  • /Account/Register: this is part of the standard asp.mvc 4 templates and has the attribute [AllowAnonymous]
  • /Task: this is the "Index"-View of a todo-list, The TaskController has the attribute [Authorize(Roles="Administrator")]

I always had the problem in the following sitation:

  1. debugging session in browser
  2. successfull login
  3. open the view "/Task" which requires authorization
  4. switch to visual studio and keep the browser open
  5. stop debugging
  6. change some code inside a controller (setting some whitespace is enough)
  7. start debugging session
  8. press refresh in browser

At this point the method "OnActionExecuting" inside the class InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute was not yet called (determined by setting breakpoints)!

But when I opened a View which doesn't require Authorization (i.e. /Account/Register) the Method "OnActionExecuting" was called. After this I could call /Task without errors.

So the solution was to make a "pseudocall" for "OnActionExecuting" on application-startup.

alpine_anil
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0

You should not need to init the database connection every time your HttpModule is called. Just do it once at application start up. Here is an article that explains how to use SimpleMembership for authentication/authorization of Web API calls. There is also a link to source code for the example project.

Kevin Junghans
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