Best Practice for Checking if user is logged into application

[Guest]

Does anyone have suggestions on the best way to check if a user is logged
into asp.net web application?

We are not using forms authentication. We are authenticating our users
against active directory. I some people use the database to determine if a
user is logged in between web pages and check in the web forms.

 

[Guest]

When you say 'against active directory' .... is that Windows Authentication?

You can use the User.Identity class to obtain certain information about the
currently logged in user:

User.Identity.IsAuthenticated = [True|False]
User.Identity.Name = [<username>]
User.Identity.AuthenticationType = [Forms|Windows...]

You can setup forms authentication to authenticate against Active Directory,
which is my preferred method, because you can have a much more integrated and
themed login page (as opposed to Windows/Integrated authentication) and still
get AD-based credential authentication. Check out this link:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnnetsec/html/SecNetHT02.asp

I've got a working version in VB.NET to post if you're not working in C#.

Andrew A. Willett
Tech Xero