C# – Porting Active Directory Authentication to use SQL Membership Provider

active-directoryasp.net-membershipcsqlmembershipprovider

I'm looking at moving my application from using active directory membership provider to using sql server provider. The main hiccup we are looking at is no being able to retrieve the user passwords from AD. Does anybody have any ideas? Anybody think I should just leave AD alone?

Best Answer

You will not be able to retrieve passwords from AD - by design and for security reasons. You can check your credentials (username and password the user has entered) against AD - but you cannot extract the passwords from AD - no can do.

To check the credentials, you can use the "ValidateUser" method on the ActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider in .NET - this will tell if you a username/password is valid.

Related Solutions

Php – Authenticating in PHP using LDAP through Active Directory

Importing a whole library seems inefficient when all you need is essentially two lines of code...

$ldap = ldap_connect("ldap.example.com");
if ($bind = ldap_bind($ldap, $_POST['username'], $_POST['password'])) {
  // log them in!
} else {
  // error message
}

C# – Validate a username and password against Active Directory

If you work on .NET 3.5 or newer, you can use the System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement namespace and easily verify your credentials:

// create a "principal context" - e.g. your domain (could be machine, too)
using(PrincipalContext pc = new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Domain, "YOURDOMAIN"))
{
    // validate the credentials
    bool isValid = pc.ValidateCredentials("myuser", "mypassword");
}

It's simple, it's reliable, it's 100% C# managed code on your end - what more can you ask for? :-)

Read all about it here:

Update:

As outlined in this other SO question (and its answers), there is an issue with this call possibly returning True for old passwords of a user. Just be aware of this behavior and don't be too surprised if this happens :-) (thanks to @MikeGledhill for pointing this out!)

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Php – Authenticating in PHP using LDAP through Active Directory

C# – Validate a username and password against Active Directory

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