MembershipProvider and RequiresQuestionAndAnswer

We provide a website template for our customers to use as the basis of their websites. Our website has a custom membership provider.

We have had a problem raised by one customer. The customer sends out invitations to prospective members by email with a url to login the member. During registration they set their security question / answer.

However sometimes the prospective member loses the email (and therefore their password) but still tries to join the site.

The customer requested that the member be allowed to reset their password without the usual security question / answer when registration was not complete.

Unfortunately the MembershipProvider doesn't provide the username when requesting whether the question / answer are required. However it does call GetUser() just before.

To get this feature working I added a method (StartingPasswordRecovery) to my MembershipProvider to flag that password reset was active, calling it from the OnVerifyingUser event in the PasswordRecovery page.

While this code works I'm not convinced that it's very robust.

Can anyone point me towards a better solution.

Here's the relevant code I added to my membership provider.

Private _hasUserDefinedQuestionAndAnswer As Boolean
Private _isResettingPassword As Boolean

Public Overloads Overrides 开发者_开发知识库Function GetUser(ByVal username As String, ByVal userIsOnline As Boolean) As System.Web.Security.MembershipUser
    ...
    _hasUserDefinedQuestionAndAnswer = ...
    ... 
End Function

Public Overrides ReadOnly Property RequiresQuestionAndAnswer() As Boolean
    Get
        If Me._isResettingPassword Then
            Me._isResettingPassword = False
            Return Me.pRequiresQuestionAndAnswer And Me._hasUserDefinedQuestionAndAnswer
        End If

        Return Me.pRequiresQuestionAndAnswer
    End Get
End Property

Public Sub StartingPasswordRecovery()
    Me._isResettingPassword = True
End Sub

---

I'm not sure if i've understood you correctly, but couldn't you use the User-Profile to determine if a user requires question and answer or not?

web.config:

<profile defaultProvider="YourProfileProvider">
    <providers>
        <clear/>
        <add name="YourProfileProvider" type="System.Web.Profile.SqlProfileProvider"  connectionStringName="ConnectionStringToDB" applicationName="/YourApp"></add>
    </providers>
    <properties>
        <add name="RequiresQuestionAndAnswer" defaultValue="false" />
    </properties>
</profile>

Custom membership-provider:

Public Overrides ReadOnly Property RequiresQuestionAndAnswer As Boolean
    Get
        If HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated Then
            Dim userRequiresQuestionAndAnswer = _
                CType(HttpContext.Current.Profile.GetPropertyValue("RequiresQuestionAndAnswer"), Boolean)
            Return userRequiresQuestionAndAnswer
        Else
            Return MyBase.RequiresQuestionAndAnswer 
        End If
    End Get
End Property

You could set it in your user-management page for every user individually:

HttpContext.Current.Profile.SetPropertyValue("RequiresQuestionAndAnswer", userRequiresQuestionAndAnswer)
HttpContext.Current.Profile.Save()

Edit:

according to your comment, i've modified the code a little bit. I hope that helps to get it working:

in custom membership-provider:

Public Overloads Overrides ReadOnly Property RequiresQuestionAndAnswer As Boolean
    Get
        If HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated Then
            Return RequiresQuestionAndAnswer(Membership.GetUser.UserName)
        Else
            Return MyBase.RequiresQuestionAndAnswer
        End If
    End Get
End Property

Public Overloads ReadOnly Property RequiresQuestionAndAnswer(ByVal userName As String) As Boolean
    Get
        Dim profile As ProfileBase = ProfileBase.Create(userName)
        If Not profile Is Nothing Then
            Dim userRequiresQuestionAndAnswer = _
                CType(profile.GetPropertyValue("RequiresQuestionAndAnswer"), Boolean)
            Return userRequiresQuestionAndAnswer
        Else
            Return MyBase.RequiresQuestionAndAnswer
        End If
    End Get
End Property

where your PasswordRecovery-Control is:

Protected Sub VerifyingUser(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As LoginCancelEventArgs)
    Dim login As WebControls.Login = DirectCast(Me.LoginView1.FindControl("Login1"), WebControls.Login)
    Dim userName = DirectCast(login.FindControl("PwdRecovery"), PasswordRecovery).UserName
    Dim RequiresQuestionAndAnswer = DirectCast(Membership.Provider, YourMembershipProvider).RequiresQuestionAndAnswer(userName)
    '....'
End Sub