Creating Custom Profile Provider

In this article I will show you that how you can make a Custom Profile Provider. I will create a small provider that will let you store the information in your custom database.

Introduction:

In this article I will show you that how you can make a Custom Profile Provider. I will create a small provider that will let you store the information in your custom database.

The Database Schema:

The database schema is pretty simple. The database table Users contains four fields which are UserID,UserName,FirstName, LastName. You can check out the schema below:

if exists (select * from dbo.sysobjects where id = object_id(N'[dbo].[Users]') and OBJECTPROPERTY(id, N'IsUserTable') = 1)
drop table [dbo].[Users]
GO

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Users] (
[UserID] [int] IDENTITY (1, 1) NOT NULL ,
[UserName] [varchar] (50) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS NULL ,
[FirstName] [varchar] (20) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS NULL ,
[LastName] [varchar] (20) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS NULL
) ON [PRIMARY]
GO

Configuring Web.config file:

The next thing you have to do is to make some configuration settings in the Web.config file. Below you can see the settings in the web.config file.

</connectionStrings>

<system.web>

</providers>

</properties>

</profile>

You can see in the above configuration that I have named my Profile provider as "MyCustomProfileProvider". Inside the provider's tags I have an add tag which contains different keys which you will see later in this article. In the properties section I have declared two properties which are FirstName and LastName. Since, there is no type specified hence their default type is String.

Creating the Custom Profile Class:

In order to make your custom profile class your class must inherit from the ProfileProvider Class. The complete code of this class is pretty long and that's why I have attached the project files at the end of this article.

First thing that I did was to override the Initialize method. The Initialize method is fired whenever you assign a value to the Profile object. Check out the code below in which I have shown that when the Initialize method is fired.

Profile.FirstName = txtFirstName.Text; // Initialize method is fired

Profile.LastName = txtLastName.Text; // Not fired since the above statement fetched all the data

string firstName = Profile.FirstName; // Not fired

string lastName = Profile.LastName; // Not fired

Now, let's see how does the Initialize method looks like:

public override void Initialize(string name, System.Collections.Specialized.NameValueCollection config)

{

this.name = name;

ConnectionStringSettings connectionStringSettings = ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings[config["connectionStringName"]];

if (connectionStringSettings == null || connectionStringSettings.ConnectionString.Trim() == "")

throw new HttpException("Connection String is not defined.");

else

{

connectionString = connectionStringSettings.ConnectionString;

}

updateProcedure = config["updateUserProcedure"];

if (updateProcedure == null || updateProcedure.Trim() == "")

throw new HttpException("updateUserProcedure is not defined.");

getProcedure = config["getUserProcedure"];

if (getProcedure == null || getProcedure.Trim() == "")

throw new HttpException("getProcedure is not defined.");

}

The Initialize method takes in the name of the Provider and the NameValueCollection as the parameters. The name will be simply whatever you described in the web.config file which in this case will be "MyCustomProfileProvider". The NameValueCollection will contain all the keys as well as the values which you have defined in the add tag inside the providers section in web.config file.

</providers>

I have made the add tag bold so that you will know that this is what NameValueCollection contain. After we get the name and the NameValueCollection we simply retrieve the values out of the keys by providing the name of the keys. Check out the code below:

config["connectionStringName"] // This will return "ConnectionString"

config["updateUserProcedure"] // This will return "usp_UpdateUser"

I am sure that you got the idea.

Now, let's implement the GetPropertyValues method which is fired whenever you assign a value to the Profile property.

public override SettingsPropertyValueCollection GetPropertyValues(SettingsContext context, SettingsPropertyCollection properties)

{

SettingsPropertyValueCollection values = new SettingsPropertyValueCollection();

SqlConnection myConnection = new SqlConnection(ConnectionString);

SqlCommand myCommand = new SqlCommand(getProcedure, myConnection);

myCommand.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure;

myCommand.Parameters.AddWithValue("@UserName", (string) context["UserName"]);

try

{

myConnection.Open();

SqlDataReader reader = myCommand.ExecuteReader(CommandBehavior.SingleRow);

reader.Read();

foreach (SettingsProperty property in properties)

{

SettingsPropertyValue value = new SettingsPropertyValue(property);

if (reader.HasRows)

{

value.PropertyValue = reader[property.Name];

values.Add(value);

}

finally

{

myConnection.Close();

myCommand.Dispose();

}

return values;

}

In the GetPropertyValues method I actually go to the Custom database and fetch the records of the user based on the UserName. This fetching is done by using a stored procedure which is called usp_GetUserProcedure. You can view the stored procedure by downloading the project files at the end of the article. The values are then inserted into the SettingsPropertyValueCollection which is then returned to the user.

Just like the GetPropertyValues method there is also a SetPropertyValues method which is used to retrieve the properties for the Profile object.

You should make the authentication mode to "forms" authentication. Also note that when you assign a value to the Profile property that does not mean that it will go to the database and insert the property values into the table. For a Profile object to work the username should be present in the table. Please also check the Global.asax file where I have authenticated the user.

I have attached the source code for this project. Please feel free to download it.

I hope you liked this article, happy coding!

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