Develop Reference

DNN Database Repository Reuse in Console Application

I have a project based on the Chris Hammond, Christoc, module template. I have a ton of code that I use to access data an external database. In my repositories I change the database from the default to whichever I need for that particular object. I do so with code that looks like this:
using (IDataContext ctx = DataContext.Instance(MyModuleSettingsBase.DATABASE_CONNECTION_STRING_KEY))
{
var rep = ctx.GetRepository<Product>();
products = rep.Get().ToList();
}
The default database is switched in the call to .Instance(). The repositories are used by my custom DNN modules. The repository is part of the solution that contains multiple custom modules. When I compile and install using the Extensions part of DNN, everything works well. In the code above, MyModuleSettingsBase.DATABASE_CONNECTION_STRING_KEY is found in a file MyModuleSettingsBase.cs file of my module solution. It is set to a simple string like "ProductDatabase". In the solution for the base DNN install (not the module solution), within the web.config file, there is a value in <connectionStrings> with name="ProductDatabase" which contains the actual connection string. This all links up fine on the DNN website.
Now I am writing a console application that does some monitoring of the site. I want to access the database to check values in the product table. I would like to reuse all of the repository code I have written. In an attempt to do so, I added a reference to the MyModules.dll file so I would only have one copy of the base code. This works to give me access to all the objects and the associated repositories but when I attempt to query data it fails. When debugging I can see that it fails on the line:
using (IDataContext ctx = DataContext.Instance(MyModuleSettingsBase.DATABASE_CONNECTION_STRING_KEY))
When viewed in a debugger, the string value MyModuleSettingsBase.DATABASE_CONNECTION_STRING_KEY is correctly set to "ProductDatabase" but the code is unable to link this with the actual connection string. I don't know where it would be checking for the connections string when running from my console application. I attempted to put a <connectionStrings> section into my App.config file but this didn't do the trick.
Is it possible to have MyModuleSettingsBase.DATABASE_CONNECTION_STRING_KEY map to the connection string in an external application which references the DLL?
If so, where can I set the value of my connection string so it matches up to the key value stored in MyModuleSettingsBase.DATABASE_CONNECTION_STRING_KEY?

I was faced similar problem 3 months ago, at that time I want to use DNN core libraries in my console application but I was failed.
I placed my queries in DNN official forum website and I got a valid response from Wes Tatters (DNN MVP).
Here is the post link: Reference URL
As your requirement of monitoring, I suggest you to create DNN Schedule Application. You can schedule it within DNN (Host->AdvancedSettings->Schedule), even good point is that you can use your repositories (DNN Libraries) in that schedule application.
I hope it solved your problem. Let me know if you have any questions.

Stuck using Microsoft.Web.WebPages.OAuth.OAuthWebSecurity in an MVC application

I don't understand some code in the Microsoft.Web.WebPages.OAuth namespace, specifically the OAuthWebSecurity class.
It's this method here:
internal static void RequestAuthenticationCore(HttpContextBase context,
string provider, string returnUrl)
{
IAuthenticationClient client = GetOAuthClient(provider);
var securityManager = new OpenAuthSecurityManager(context,
client, OAuthDataProvider);
securityManager.RequestAuthentication(returnUrl);
}
The first line is fine => grab the provider data, for this authentication request. Let's pretend this is a TwitterClient(..).
Now, we need to create a SecurityManager class .. which accepts three args. What is that 3rd arg? An OAuthDataProvider? That's defined as a static, here:
internal static IOpenAuthDataProvider OAuthDataProvider =
new WebPagesOAuthDataProvider();
And this creates a WebPagesOAuthDataProvider. This is my problem. What is this? And why does it have to be tightly coupled to an ExtendedMembershipProvider? What is an ExtendedMembershipProvider? Why is this needed?
In my web application I'm trying to use a RavenDb database and my own custom principal and custom identity. Nothing to do with Membership or SimpleMembership that comes with ASP.NET.
What is that class and why is it used, etc? What's it's purpose? Is this something that DNOA requires? and why?

I didn't write the code you mention, so I could be wrong here, but I believe the ASP.NET code you refer to is indeed bound to their Membership provider.
If you aren't using the ASP.NET membership provider, I would suggest you simply use DotNetOpenAuth directly (as opposed to through the facade that Microsoft added), which has no such tight coupling.

If you don't need the ASP.NET Membership system to provide local login accounts (accounts stored in your local membership database) on your system I wouldn't go down the Route of using any WebMatrix based bits (WebSecurity / OAuthWebSecurity).
They actually make it harder to interact with DNOA and more or less hide all the interesting bits at the same time anyway ...
As I needed local acounts I ended up pulling all the source code for this into my source code and then editing it from there (I had other reasons for doing this as well, not just to enrich the interaction with DNOA).
If you need local accounts - use WebMatrix
If you don't need local accounts - use DNOA directly.

Set active membership provider programmatically

I have a web application with custom membership providers. The provider I want to use connects to a Progress database.
I have one page that uses a competely different membership provider. I've tried setting this via the web.config but cannot get it working.
So I was wondering if I could set the membership provider programmatically for this page. I see here that it is possible on some level though this looks pretty hacky. I was hoping there'd be a clean way of doing this one way or another. Everything else on SO or the wider web seems to end in a dead end. This suggests to me that what I'm attempting is not possible but it would be nice to know either way.
Is it possible to simply switch the MembershipProvider at runtime?

This is not an ideal solution but you can select a different provider at runtime.
var p = (ProgressMembershipProvider)Membership.Providers["ProgressProvider"];
var user = p.GetUser("Foo", true);

Changing the membership providers ApplicationName during runtime. How?

I have a bit of a unique situation here. I'm making a web application that is going to have
the ability to login with different web applications credentials. For example you can login/register with my site or you can login/register with your YouTube account. I'm not using OpenID because I need to have access to YouTube's data in this case.
I'm using ASP.NET MVC 3 EF4 with custom Membership, role, profile providers.
The problem is user names can't be unique because someone with a YouTube user name could have the same user name as someone that registered with my site. So I got around with by specifying a user type in my user table. This is pretty much a composite key (user id and user type).
I have a custom authorize attribute that is checking for the role that the user is in but now I need to implement a custom IPrincipal because I need to pass a user type. Only problem is where do I store that? the session?
Originally I thought this is what the Application table was for, and I had momentary success with that but read there is threading issues, and I was getting session faults all over the place it wasn't that great :(
I'm wondering what the best way to do with is because I can't use the overridden methods in the providers because I have to add a UserType parameter to some of the methods, but then this breaks the functionality of the provider.
EDIT:
I basically need to have the ability to change the ApplicationName at runtime pro-grammatically. I tried doing this, the only problem was when I stopped my development server but left my browser open then ran my dev server again it wouldnt keep the application name.
EDIT:
I've changed my application to use OAuth, I never found a good solution.

I basically need to have the ability
to change the ApplicationName at
runtime pro-grammatically. I tried
doing this, the only problem was when
I stopped my development server but
left my browser open then ran my dev
server again it wouldnt keep the
application name.
If you need to change the ApplicationName, this means you need to select a provider at runtime.
The only way to do this is to NOT use the singleton "Membership" as it uses the provider defined in web.config.
Instead each time you need your provider use :
MembershipProvider userProvider = Membership.Providers[UserProviderName];
Just set UserProviderName the way you want. I would go with a custom global authorization or preAction filter which detect the provider from some cookie or other session variable and put the provider in the HttpContextBase.Items collection which lives for one and only one request.

The best answer to this problem is answered on stackoverflow here: Membership provider with different ApplicationName in area
Here's the code they used:
Membership.Providers["MyOtherProvider"].ValidateUser(username, pwd);

Ryan,
Hmmm... can you work-around the problem by prepending the issuing-authority (local or YouTube) to the username field itself... Example usernames: "LOCAL/corlettk", "YOUTUBE/corlettk"???
Ok, you'll need a custom Authenticator in order to split the complex-string, and flick-pass the login-request to appropriate underlying Authenticator... but once that's done, (I guess) you're all set to deal EASILY with the much bigger problem (from your perspective) of Authorisation.
I percieve that you're a smart guy... have you considered-and-dismissed this approach allready?
Cheers. Keith.
PS: Yes, I'm a hacker... but I have bad habit of hacking stuff up that WORKS... so they've given-up trying to educate me.

Automatically binding to custom domains in IIS 7.5 from .NET Web Application (MVC 3)

I am building a web application in which there will be a core library and database that is shared by many instances. To give a more concrete example lets say I have a blogging engine and users can sign up to their own blog which will act independently of the others on the system.
Each instance must have their own subdomain eg: http://john.extremeblogging.tld/ and also have the option to have their own domain mapped to it eg: http://jonnyblogger.tld/
The problem I have is not knowing how to notify IIS 7.5 what to do when requests come in from either of those domains. Is it as simple as setting this web application to the default site within IIS and the application can use the request headers to take the appropriate action?
It strikes me that this should be a pretty common task so I don't anticipate this to be too difficult to solve but at the moment I am not sure how to approach it.
Any guidance is appreciated.
Thanks

id
Its been very long this question was asked, but still answering it so it might be helpful to others in need.
I happened to work on a big SaaS based multi-tenant project which involved unique subdomains for each of the users site. User could design and manage the content on his own site.
On the registration of a tenant/user we can add domain binding with the IIS using C# following this link-
http://amitpatelit.com/2013/03/12/enter-iis-binding-entry-by-c-code/
Alongside we need to check the host name from the request headers and get the subdomain name to fetch the subdomain specific data and interface etc.
protected override void OnAuthorization(AuthorizationContext filter_context)
{
var url = Request.Headers["HOST"];
var index = url.IndexOf(".");
if(index > 0)
{
var sub = url.Split('.')[0];
FrontSiteData = CommonService.GetSiteData(sub);
}
}
Please let me know if you require more information.
Regards,
Manik