ASP.net C# - How do I default the User Name to the Login control when users select Remember Me?

Yes, I've looked at that article and others like it.  The problem is that what I have to do isn't "standard".  Normally, Forms authentication want's to log you in automatically, like it does on this site at Experts-Exchange.

In our case, we don't want it to actuallly log the user in (it's okay for them to authenticate using standard forms authentication) but they can't get to the application until they supply thier password and click the login button.

This is the scenario where I've been running into trouble.  When I try to use forms authentication, the problems comes when the user logs out.  They're technically still authenticated, just not to the app.  So if I use only the authentication ticket, there will be one whether there's a cookie or not and the user name will display even though they haven't selected to "remember me".

Things seem to work fine if you just login, close down the browser and come back.  But when you log out and go back to the default public page, I'm always getting finding either the cookie or the auth ticket from the previous session.

My thought was to just write a cookie with the username in it, then check for the presense of the cookie and throw the username into the Login box.  I just haven't been able to get this to work and beginning to think that I should just bite the bullet and code the complete login component as custom rather than using the 2.0 Login control.

I just hoped there'd be an easier way that that.  

My other thought was to just store a "remember me" flag in SQL Server then when the user authenticates via the authentication ticket - read the data field to see if they want to be remembered.  I'd really like to avoid making a db change for this though, if I can avoid it.

I hope that clarifies things a bit more.  Let me know if you have more specific questions.

The proper question might be what code should be written to log the user out so they clear all the cookies from memory, clear the session variables, and establish a new session?  If I could do all that properly, then the default process from the Login control would work.  But if you do a FormsAuthentication.LogOut() it destroys the persistent ticket.

Thanks for the feedback everyone.  I wish it were simple, but then I wouldn't have needed to post the question.

Bryant

Let me give an example of what I've been running into.

Say I sign in and select the rememberMe check box from the Login control.  I get a persistent cookie with the authentication ticket inside.

Now if I add the following code:
MembershipUser mu = Membership.GetUser();
            TextBox un = (TextBox)Login1.FindControl("UserName");
            if (mu.UserName != null)
            {
                un.Text = mu.UserName;
                Login1.RememberMeSet = true;
            }

The login control has my username filled in and the rememberme box is checked.

There is no other code in entire login.ascx.cs file

But when I type my password and click login it doesn't go anywhere.  This same behavior occurs whether I put the code (listed above) in the Page_Load or in the Login_Init.

The login control is defined as follows:
<asp:Login ID="Login1" runat="server" DestinationPageUrl="~/App/AccountSummary.aspx" FailureText="We're sorry, but the username and password you entered could not be authenticated by our system." OnLoggedIn="OnLoggedIn" Width="201px" OnLoginError="OnLoginError" OnPreRender="Login1_PreRender" OnInit="Login1_Init">

The login button is as follows:
<asp:Button ID="LoginButton" runat="server" CommandName="Login" Text="Sign in" ValidationGroup="ctl00$Login1" TabIndex="4" CssClass="SignInButton" Style="border-color:White;border-width:1px;border-style:Outset;font-family:Arial;font-size:8pt;height:20px;width:75px;" BorderColor="Black" BorderStyle="Solid" BorderWidth="1px" />

If I uncheck the Remember Me box and watch my temporary internet files, the cookie / auth ticket is removed.  If if check and sign in again, the cookie/auth ticket is there again.  The problem is that it doesn't ever get me to my app/AccountSummary.aspx page.

If I remove the code everthing works normally, but I don't have my username and remember me pre-filled in.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

Thanks,

Bryant

You're right about having to definitely go with Cookies.  And you're correct

So here's what I've discovered and it leads me to the conclusion that I'm going to indeed have to write my own custom login component/control because the asp.net 2.0 Login Control won't let you set the username text field.

I got down to the basic problem I was having and tested it very simply.  Here's what I did:

I took the following code and pasted it one-at-a-time into each of the following Login Control events.
OnDataBinding
OnInit
OnLoad
OnPreRender
I also tried the same events on the UserName TextBox control within the Login control.
I further tried the code in the Page_Load event

Here's the code I used:
TextBox un = (TextBox)Login1.FindControl("UserName");
un.Text = "TestUser";

This simply finds the the text box in the Login control and sets it to a username - very simple.
I setup the TestUser account and ensured I was able to properly login using that username before I began my test.

The result is that no matter what event I placed that code to populate the username, I could not log in.  The Login control gets stuck in some sort of loop and won't fire of the LoggingIn or LoggedIn event.  It gives no errors and doesn't even fire off the OnLoginError event.

The net result was that it appears to the user as if they never hit the Sign In button.  In debug mode, the Login control seems to Load the Page multiple times and initialize a number of times, then just simply stops.  I also noticed that at some point it clears out the username and password, then fires the various event I had my code in, and repopulates the username from my code.

So my choice is to either write a custom login or possibly use the OnAuthenticate event or the OnClick event of the Sign In button to manually code the authentication and login logic.

This appears to be a bug in the Login control.  Can anyone else confirm this, or have any other suggestions?  I don't know if the Login.UserName method can be overridden to add a set. Currently it's read only.  Perhaps if I were able to do an override, and set the UserName field that way instead of through the text box, it would work.  Any thoughts out there?

Thanks again for the feedback.

Bryant