Application_BeginRequest Usage

Question

we are trying some login operations in our ASP.NET MVC project. Our goal is : "If user's IP is not from our intranet, redirect him/her to login page. Else, just go to our index page. We wrote some code but we are inside a loop.

GLOBAL.ASAX

protected void Application_BeginRequest(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        var request = ((System.Web.HttpApplication) sender).Request;

        string ip1 = request.UserHostAddress;
        string shortLocalIP;
        if (ip1 != null && ip1.Contains("."))
        {
            string[] ipValues = ip1.Split('.');
            shortLocalIP = ipValues[0] +"."+ipValues[1];
        }
        else
        {
            shortLocalIP = "192.168";
        }

        //var ip2 = request.ServerVariables["LOCAL_ADDR"];
        //var ip3 = request.ServerVariables["SERVER_ADDR"];

        if (shortLocalIP != LOCALIP)
        {
            if ("/Login/User".Equals(request.RawUrl, StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase))
            {                   
                    return;                                  
            }

            Response.Clear();            
            Response.Redirect("/Login/User");             
            Response.End();       
        }
    }

LOGIN CONTROLLER

 public class LoginController : Controller
{
    // GET: Login
    public ActionResult User()
    {         
        return View();
    }

    public ActionResult checkAuthentication(FormCollection collection)
    {
        bool isAuthenticated = new LdapServiceManager().isAuthenticated(collection);
        if (isAuthenticated)
        {
            Response.Redirect("Home/Index");
        }
        else
        {
            Response.Redirect("/Login/User");
        }
        return null;
    }
}

LOGIN CSHTML

 <form class="login-form" action="/Login/checkAuthentication" method="post" novalidate="novalidate">

Application_BeginRequest triggers everytime when we press some button or something else. But we want these operations at the beginning only. Thanks...

Should we use SESSION START in GLOBAL.ASAX??

Answer 1

You can use ActionFilter for this. Create a class for custom filter, something like this -

public class IntranetAction : ActionFilterAttribute
{
    public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
    {
        bool isIPAddressValid = false;//TODO: Check the IP validity here
        if (isIPAddressValid)
        {
            filterContext.Result = new RedirectToRouteResult(new RouteValueDictionary(new
            {
                controller = "Account", //TODO - Edit as per you controller
                action = "Login"        //and Action
            }));
        }

        base.OnActionExecuting(filterContext);
    }
}

And simply use it over your controller ActionMethod like this for example -

    [IntranetAction]
    public ActionResult Index()
    {
        return View();
    }

Suugest to go through a good article to get started with custom filters - http://www.asp.net/mvc/overview/older-versions-1/controllers-and-routing/understanding-action-filters-cs

Answer 2

Application_BeginRequest will be called on every request made to your server. If you want to execute some logic only on certain action use ActionFilters