Implementing a Custom Identity and IPrincipal in MVC

Question

I have a basic MVC 2 beta app where I am trying to implement a custom Identity and Principal classes.

I have created my classes that implement the IIdentity and IPrincipal interfaces, instantiated them and then assigned the CustomPrincipal object to my Context.User in Application_AuthenticateRequest of the Global.asax.

This all succeeds and the objects look good. When I begin to render the Views the pages are now failing. The first failure is in the default LogoOnUserControl view on the following line of code:

 [ <%= Html.ActionLink("Log Off", "LogOff", "Account") %> ]

If I pull this out it then fails on a different "Html.ActionLink" line of code.

The error I receive is:

An exception of type 'System.Runtime.Serialization.SerializationException' occurred in WebDev.WebHost40.dll but was not handled in user code

Additional information: Type is not resolved for member 'Model.Entities.UserIdentity,Model, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null'.

Is there some additional properties that I need to implement in my Identity in order to use a custom Identity in MVC? I tried to implement [Serializable()] in the Identity class but it didn't seem to have an impact.

UPDATE: I've tried 3-4 alternate ways of implemented this but still fails with the same error. If I use GenericIdentity/GenericPrincipal classes directly it does not error.

GenericIdentity ident = new GenericIdentity("jzxcvcx");
GenericPrincipal princ = new GenericPrincipal(ident, null);
Context.User = princ;

But this gets me nowhere since I am trying to use the CustomIdentity to hold a couple of properties. If I implement the IIdentity/IPrincipal interfaces or inherit GenericIdentity/GenericPrincipal for my CustomIdentity/CustomPrincipal it fails with the original error above.

Godmother

Re: the up vote...Are you also seeing a similar issue? – Godmother

Answer 1

I figured this one out with a little help from the web :) The trick is that you have to implement the ISerializable interface in your class that implements IIdentity. I hope this helps save someone else some time :)

Class declaration:

[Serializable]
    public class ForumUserIdentity : IIdentity, ISerializable

Implementation for ISerializable:

#region ISerializable Members

        public void GetObjectData(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)
        {
            if (context.State == StreamingContextStates.CrossAppDomain)
            {
                GenericIdentity gIdent = new GenericIdentity(this.Name, this.AuthenticationType);
                info.SetType(gIdent.GetType());

                System.Reflection.MemberInfo[] serializableMembers;
                object[] serializableValues;

                serializableMembers = FormatterServices.GetSerializableMembers(gIdent.GetType());
                serializableValues = FormatterServices.GetObjectData(gIdent, serializableMembers);

                for (int i = 0; i < serializableMembers.Length; i++)
                {
                    info.AddValue(serializableMembers[i].Name, serializableValues[i]);
                }
            }
            else
            {
                throw new InvalidOperationException("Serialization not supported");
            }
        }

        #endregion

Here is the link to the article that has more detail on the "Feature"

Godmother

this feature is bs... its been around since 2006 and still affecting me with my asp.net mvc-3 application. – Frankenstein

This solved my problem. The same thing goes for IPrincipal as well. – Paviour

why are you created a new GenericIdentity instead of a CustomIdentity in your DeSerialization code? => `GenericIdentity gIdent = new GenericIdentity(...)' ?? – Selestina

Just wanted to note that there is a difference between System.ISerializable and System.Runtime.Serialization.ISerializable. I struggled with the first for a while before realizing the second (System.Runtime.Serialization.ISerializable) was the one I needed. – Manumit

Answer 2

I had the same problem. I solved it by moving my principal creating from MvcApplication_AuthenticateRequest to MvcApplication_PostAuthenticateRequest. I dunno why/how, but it solved the problem :)

        void MvcApplication_PostAuthenticateRequest(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        HttpCookie authCookie = HttpContext.Current.Request.Cookies[FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName];
        if (authCookie != null)
        {
            string encTicket = authCookie.Value;
            if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(encTicket))
            {
                FormsAuthenticationTicket ticket = FormsAuthentication.Decrypt(encTicket);
                BiamedIdentity id = new BiamedIdentity(ticket);
                GenericPrincipal prin = new GenericPrincipal(id, null);
                HttpContext.Current.User = prin;
            }
        }
    }

Particularize

Answer 3

With me it seems to work when I inherit my Identity class from MarshalByRefObject.

Also note: when using Linq-to-Sql there was no problem. I switched to Entity-Framework and bang, I got the above message.

Teraterai

#6503880 there is more on marshalbyrefobject – Paulsen