Summary

In this chapter, you learned about the four security frameworks included in the ASP.NET Framework. In the first part of the chapter, you learned how to authenticate users by enabling both Forms and Windows authentication. You learned how to take advantage of several advanced features of authentication such as cookieless authentication and cross-application authentication.

You also learn how to authorize users to access particular resources. You not only learned how to control access to ASP.NET pages, but how you can control access to image files and ASP classic pages.

Next, you learned how to use ASP.NET Membership to represent user information. You learned how to use the Membership class to create users, delete users, and modify user properties programmatically. You also explored the two Membership providers included with the ASP.NET Framework: the SqlMembershipProvider and the ActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider. Finally, we created a custom MembershipProvider: the XmlMembershipProvider.

The final section of this chapter was devoted to the Role Manager. You learned how to configure the three Role providers included in the ASP.NET Framework: the SqlRoleProvider, WindowsTokenRoleProvider, and the AuthorizationStoreRoleProvider. You also learned how to take advantage of the Roles class to create roles, delete roles, and assign users to roles programmatically.