Confused about modifying password strength requirements in ASP.NET 2.0.

[Paul]

Hello All,

I am working through the SAMS "ASP.NET 2.0 - Unleased" book to teach
myself ASP.NET. It is a great book, but Chapter 21 "Using ASP.NET
Membership" is causing me problems - or maybe I am just missing
something.

It is telling me that in order to modify user password requirements I
need to add the following to the web.config file.

<membership defaultProvider="MyProvider">
<providers>
<add
name="MyProvider"
type="System.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProvider"
minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters="0"
connectionStringName="LocalSqlServer" />
</providers>
</membership>

The trouble with this is that "MyProvider" (whatever that is) is now
the default provider so it seems to override the provider that I
already have (the provider that was created for me the first time I
used the asp:CreateUserWizard control for the first time).

How do I modify the web.config file to change the value of
minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters without "adding" a provider. What
is the name of the provider that I already have? I am confused.

Help is always appreciated.

Paul

 

[Juan T. Llibre]

re:
!> What is the name of the provider that I already have?

The default membership provider is a SqlMembershipProvider
instance named "AspNetSqlMembershipProvider".

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/014bec1k(VS.80).aspx

It contains methods and properties specific to using
SQL Express 2005 as a data store for membership information.

It inherits from the MembershipProvider class.
The MembershipProvider class itself inherits from the ProviderBase class.

re:

How do I modify the web.config file to change the value of
minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters without "adding" a provider.

Add the required lines, after clearing the existing default provider.

<membership defaultProvider="MyProvider">
<providers>
<clear />
<add name="AspNetSqlMembershipProvider"
type="System.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProvider"
minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters="0"
connectionStringName="LocalSqlServer" />
</providers>
</membership>

Make sure you don't leave out any important settings...

 

[Juan T. Llibre]

Aargh! Typo warning !

That should have been :

<membership defaultProvider="AspNetSqlMembershipProvider">
<providers>
<clear />
<add name="AspNetSqlMembershipProvider"
type="System.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProvider"
minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters="0"
connectionStringName="LocalSqlServer" />
</providers>
</membership>

Sorry...

The rest stands as posted.

 

[Paul]

Thanks Juan,

That brings me a little bit closer to understanding, but I am still
confused. I added the code that you gave me to the web.config file.

I am still getting a result that I don't understand. As an experiment
I have the following Page_Load event in one of my pages.

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
MembershipUserCollection mine = Membership.GetAllUsers();
foreach (MembershipUser myUser in mine)
{
Response.Write(myUser.UserName + "<br />");
}
}

After I added the code that you suggested into the web.config file
this event produced no output. So as an experiment I created another
user and loaded the page again. This time I got output - the user that
I had just added. Then I had a look at the contents of the
aspnet_Users table in the ASPNETDB.MDF database and found that the
user I had just added was there with all the other users that I had in
there before. If all the users are stored in the same place, why does
the Membership.GetAllUser() method return a collection with only the
user that I added after I edited the web.config file. I had a look at
the data in some of the other tables in ASPNETDB.MDF database to see
if there was a field that gave the GetAllUsers() method the info it
needed to differentiate between users that I had added before editing
web.config and those I added after but I could not find anything. I
must be missing knowledge of some fundamental Membership concept that
is causing my confusion.

Paul