AnonymousIdentification - what is it ? and do you need it ?

Configures anonymous identification for application authorization. This is required to identify entities that are not authenticated when authorization is required.


<anonymousidentification ---enabled="[true false]"
---cookieless="[UseUri UseCookies AutoDetect UseDeviceProfile]"
---cookieName=""
---cookiePath=""
---cookieProtection="[None Validation Encryption All]"
---cookieRequireSSL="[true false]"
---cookieSlidingExpiration="[true false]"
---cookieTimeout="[DD.HH:MM:SS]"
---domain="cookie domain"
/>



This is the link to MSDN for the actual definition of the webconfig setting

ASP.NET 2.0 Profile object from web service

You have started to use ASP.NET 2.0 Profile Provider and you are very happy with it. All your .aspx pages are full of "Profile.Something". You also introduced a lot of new properties on the profile object via web.config. Then you added a new web service. There you want to access the Profile object. You realize, you are doomed.

You cannot access the Profile object from Web Service.

At runtime, ASP.NET generates a class looking at the specification provided in web.config, which becomes the "Profile" object in .aspx pages. But this object is not available in Web service (.asmx.cs) and you cannot see the custom properties you have added in the profile object.

Although HttpContext.Current.Profile will give you reference to Profile object, but it's type is ProfileBase which does not show your custom properties. Makes sense, because the class is generated at runtime. But if it can be made available in .aspx.cs, then it should also be available in .asmx.cs.

In order to overcome this problem, you have to hand code that profile class in your App_Code folder and then configure web.config so that it does not auto generate the class instead use your one.

Here's what you do in web.config:





I have added a new attribute UserProfile.

Now go to App_Code and make a UserProfile class like this:

public class UserProfile : System.Web.Profile.ProfileBase{
---[SettingsAllowAnonymousAttribute(true)]
---public virtual int Timezone{
------get{return ((int)(this.GetPropertyValue("Timezone")));}
------set{this.SetPropertyValue("Timezone", value);}
---}
}


Declare all the properties like this.

Don't forget to add the [SettingsAllowAnonymousAttribute(true)] on the properties which you want to be made available to anonymous users.

At the end of the class, add this method:

public virtual ProfileCommon GetProfile(string username){
---return ((ProfileCommon) (ProfileBase.Create(username)));
}


Here's an easy way to avoid hand coding this class and generating it automatically. Before you make the changes in web.config and create the UserProfile class, run your web project as it was before. But before running it, turn off SQL Server. This will make Asp.net execution to break on first call to some Profile object's property. For ex, if you have a custom property TimeZone in the Profile object, execution will break on this line:

public virtual int Timezone{
get{ return ((int)(this.GetPropertyValue("Timezone")));


It will fail to load the profile object values from database because database is down. If you scroll up, you will see this is the class that ASP.NET generates at run time. You will see all the properties are declared on this class already. So, you can just copy & paste it in your own class easily!

But after copying, you will realize there's no [SettingsAllowAnonymousAttribute(true)] attribute. So, you will have to put them manually. Also after making your own custom class, you will have to remove all the custom properties declared inside node in the web.config.

Now that you have your own Profile class, inside web service, you can cast (HttpContext.Current.Profile as UserProfile) and then you can use all the custom properties.

If you don't want to enjoy strongly typed coding on web service, then you can always use the old way of accessing Profile properties via: Profile.GetPropertyValue("TimeZone"). But it's no fun.

Tuning and performance tips for ASP.NET 2.0

A great article that shows some major tips in ensuring your application is running at its maximum peak!

Enhancing the Profile object with a custom profile provider

One of the downsides of the profile object is that in its default state it pushes all the data to un accessable columns in the profile tables.

I need to access the data in the profile object in the sql queries. So the only way to do this is to create my own profileprovider (the data into the datastore goes via this new provider)

Guess what, there is already prewritten profile providers out there that will do this for me :).

Heres the link to a Microsoft guy Hao Kung thats done the hard work for us. He's documented out a tableprofileprovider for us and given us his code and notes! What a guy. Link to the samples and the whitepaper can be found here.

Profile and storing a shopping cart

So i want to build a shopping cart into my ecommerce site..

This is how i implemented it...


1) created a shopping cart and shopping cart item concept clases (see this blog entry "generics - shopping cart" for the design of the classes)

2) Because the shopping cart is at the level of the user im gonna use the Profile object to store it. A huge advantage of the Profile architecture is that it is generic enough to allow me to store arbitary types and supports a multitude of persistence methods. In my case im gonna store the persisted class into the profile object.. awesome!


<profile enabled="true">
---<properties>
------<add serializeas="Binary" allowanonymous="true" type="SampleCode.ShoppingCart" name="ShoppingCart">
---</properties>
</profile>

And to use the shopping cart from within code is this simple:

---Profile.ShoppingCart.Items.Add( new Item("Chocolate covered cherries", 3.95F));

Good articles around Profile

ASP Expert

four guys from rola

ASP.NET 2.0 Profiles

A great blog entry of this cool new feature of asp.net 2.0 Profile