Description

The WebSecurity Object provides security and authentication for ASP.NET Web Pages applications.

With the WebSecurity object you can create user accounts, login and logout users, reset or change passwords, and more.

WebSecurity Object Reference - Properties

WebSecurity Object Reference - Methods

Initializing the WebSecurity Database

You must create or initialize an WebSecurity database before you can use the WebSecurity object in your code.

In the root of your web, create a page (or edit the page ) named _AppStart.cshtml.

Put the following code inside the file:

_AppStart.cshtml

@{
WebSecurity.InitializeDatabaseConnection("Users", "UserProfile", "UserId", "Email", true);
}

The code above will run each time the web site (application) starts. It initializes the WebSecurity database.

"Users" is the name of the WebSecurity database (Users.sdf).

"UserProfile" is the name of the database table that contains the user profile information.

"UserId" is the name of the column that contains the user IDs (primary key).

"Email" is the name of the column that contains user names.

The last parameter true is a boolean value indicating that the user profile and membership tables should be created automatically if they don't exist, otherwise false.

Although true indicates automatic creation of the database tables, the database itself will not be created automatically. It must exist.

The WebSecurity Database

The UserProfile table contains one record for each user, with a user ID (primary key) and the user's name (email):

The Membership table will contain membership information about when the user was created and if (and when) the membership was confirmed.

Much like this (some columns are not shown):

Simple Membership Configuration

You might get errors using the WebSecurity object, if your site is not configured to use the ASP.NET Web Pages membership system SimpleMembership.

This can occur if a hosting provider's server is configured differently than your local server. To fix this, add the following element to the site's Web.config file:

<appSettings>
<add key="enableSimpleMembership" value="true" />
</appSettings>