Scott Hanselman

Here's a heck of a thing.  I'm doing my own FormsAuthentication Cookie/Ticket, rather then using the built in FormsAuthentication.RedirectFromLoginPage, as I need support for UserData, and other encrypted goodness.  So, I need to:

    // Create the authentication ticket            
            FormsAuthenticationTicket authTicket = new
                FormsAuthenticationTicket(1, //version
                userName, // user name
                DateTime.Now,             //creation
                DateTime.Now.AddMinutes(??), //Expiration
                false, //Persistent
                userDataGoodness); //Secret Sauce

but, I want to use the Timeout value that is already in the Web.config:

which seems reasonable, eh?  Plus, as I'm a nice guy (hopefully not a hack) I like to do things the Kosher way.  I'd had to hack this up.  So, I figure I'll use something like 'FormsAuthentication.Timeout' - except it doesn't exist.  I can get to everything else, just not the Timeout.

And the Googling and Reflecting begins.  Sometimes I think that's my full time job, Googling and Reflecting.

Here's my thought process, for your edutainment:

• THOUGHT: Surely they must have thought about this.
• ANSWER VIA GOOGLE: In a 2002 MSDN Online Chat, someone asked this question and was told: “Unfortunately, we don't expose this configuration property currently.“ but given these helpful tips:
  1. You could try reading it using System.Management
     (ME: But this would require giving WMI access to ASP.NET and doing something like:
     
     

     string path = "root\\NetFrameworkV1:forms";
     ManagementObject pm = new ManagementClass(path).CreateInstance();
     pm["Selector"] = "config://localhost"; // represents the machine.config file
     pm.Get();
     Response.Output.WriteLine("timeout = {0}<br>", pm["timeout"]);

     Yuck.)
  2. You can retrieve the value you set by casting User.Identity to an instance of FormsIdentity and accessing the fields on that object.
     (ME: This only allows me to see the result AFTER I've already set it once.  I need this to work the first time, and I'd like to read it as a configuration item, not a side effect.
     
     
• THOUGHT: Someone on Google Groups must have done this before.
• ANSWER FROM GOOGLE GROUPS: Noone has a clue, but many have hacked things worse that my upcoming hack. NOTE: Don't do this, and remember Scott's Rule of Programming 0x3eA)

  1. Private Function TimeOut_Get() As Integer
     'Get formsauthentication TimeOut value
     'Kludge, timeout property is not exposed in the class
     FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie("Username",
     False)
     Dim ticket As FormsAuthenticationTicket =
     FormsAuthentication.Decrypt(Response.Cookies
     (FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName).Value)
     Dim ts As New TimeSpan(ticket.Expiration.Ticks -
     ticket.IssueDate.Ticks)
     Return ts.Minutes
     End Function

• THOUGHT: I could just put the configuration somewhere else in my web.config and let folks keep the two in sync.
• ANSWER FROM MY CONSCIENCE: That would mean that there would be invalid states if they didn't match.

Note, here's where insanity and over engineering set in...

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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