Authentication problems after publishing MVC 4 app to azure

Question

I have a basic ASP.NET MVC 4 site which I am hosting on Azure websites. The authentication is forms authentication and has not been customised from the default template. Every time I publish, when I revisit my site, it just hangs with a very long timeout (couple of minutes perhaps) before finally showing me an error message. I can recover by deleting the cookies for the site in my browser and reloading.

Initially the problem was just trying to access pages that required authentication, but then I added this to my shared _Layout.cshtml:

@if (User.IsInRole("Admin"))
{
    <li>@Html.ActionLink("Admin", "Index", "Admin")</li>
}

which now means no pages at all are accessible after an new publish, and so I can't even click the logout link, which was another way I used to be able to fix the issue.

Have I got something configured wrong? Although I have a workaround I can use myself, this will not be a good experience for users of the site after I publish an update.

EDIT: from the ELMAH logs, it seems like forms authentication is trying to create a SQL Express database when I call IsInRole. I can't see why it would do this, as my forms authentication is all set up to use my SQL Azure database.

System.Web.HttpException (0x80004005): Unable to connect to SQL Server database. ---> System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException (0x80131904): A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: SQL Network Interfaces, error: 26 - Error Locating Server/Instance Specified)
   at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlInternalConnection.OnError(SqlException exception, Boolean breakConnection)
   at System.Data.SqlClient.TdsParser.ThrowExceptionAndWarning()
   at System.Data.SqlClient.TdsParser.Connect(ServerInfo serverInfo, SqlInternalConnectionTds connHandler, Boolean ignoreSniOpenTimeout, Int64 timerExpire, Boolean encrypt, Boolean trustServerCert, Boolean integratedSecurity, Boolean withFailover)
   at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlInternalConnectionTds.AttemptOneLogin(ServerInfo serverInfo, String newPassword, Boolean ignoreSniOpenTimeout, TimeoutTimer timeout, SqlConnection owningObject, Boolean withFailover)
   at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlInternalConnectionTds.LoginNoFailover(ServerInfo serverInfo, String newPassword, Boolean redirectedUserInstance, SqlConnection owningObject, SqlConnectionString connectionOptions, TimeoutTimer timeout)
   at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlInternalConnectionTds.OpenLoginEnlist(SqlConnection owningObject, TimeoutTimer timeout, SqlConnectionString connectionOptions, String newPassword, Boolean redirectedUserInstance)
   at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlInternalConnectionTds..ctor(DbConnectionPoolIdentity identity, SqlConnectionString connectionOptions, Object providerInfo, String newPassword, SqlConnection owningObject, Boolean redirectedUserInstance)
   at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnectionFactory.CreateConnection(DbConnectionOptions options, Object poolGroupProviderInfo, DbConnectionPool pool, DbConnection owningConnection)
   at System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionFactory.CreateNonPooledConnection(DbConnection owningConnection, DbConnectionPoolGroup poolGroup)
   at System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionFactory.GetConnection(DbConnection owningConnection)
   at System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionClosed.OpenConnection(DbConnection outerConnection, DbConnectionFactory connectionFactory)
   at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection.Open()
   at System.Web.Management.SqlServices.GetSqlConnection(String server, String user, String password, Boolean trusted, String connectionString)
ClientConnectionId:00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
   at System.Web.Management.SqlServices.GetSqlConnection(String server, String user, String password, Boolean trusted, String connectionString)
   at System.Web.Management.SqlServices.SetupApplicationServices(String server, String user, String password, Boolean trusted, String connectionString, String database, String dbFileName, SqlFeatures features, Boolean install)
   at System.Web.Management.SqlServices.Install(String database, String dbFileName, String connectionString)
   at System.Web.DataAccess.SqlConnectionHelper.CreateMdfFile(String fullFileName, String dataDir, String connectionString)
   at System.Web.DataAccess.SqlConnectionHelper.EnsureSqlExpressDBFile(String connectionString)
   at System.Web.DataAccess.SqlConnectionHelper.GetConnection(String connectionString, Boolean revertImpersonation)
   at System.Web.Security.SqlRoleProvider.GetRolesForUser(String username)
   at WebMatrix.WebData.SimpleRoleProvider.GetRolesForUser(String username)
   at System.Web.Security.RolePrincipal.IsInRole(String role)

Answer 1

After trying dozens of different suggestions from various blog posts, I have found a solution. Adding the InitialiseSimpleMembership attribute to my home controller resolves the problem.

[InitializeSimpleMembership]
public class HomeController : Controller

After making this change, I managed several successful publishes without issues. I suspect the reason is that the following line of code in the InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute constructor needs to run before any calls to User.IsInRole are made:

WebSecurity.InitializeDatabaseConnection("DefaultConnection", "UserProfile", "UserId", "UserName", autoCreateTables: true);

I guess the best thing to do would be to run InitializeSimpleMembership in Application_Start.

Answer 2

Here's a tutorial that you could follow to setup a SQL database when deploying your application on Windows Azure. You must setup the correct connection string in your web.config which by default is pointing to a local SQL Express database when you create a new ASP.NET MVC 4 application using the Internet template.

Your SQL Azure connection string will look something like this:

<connectionStrings>
    <add name="DefaultConnection" connectionString="Data Source=tcp:#server#.database.windows.net,1433;Initial Catalog=#DBName#;User ID=UserName#@#server#;Password=#password#;MultipleActiveResultSets=True" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/>
</connectionStrings>