Convert System.Web.HttpContext.Current to System.Web.HttpContextBase

Question

I need to access the OwinContext from within a constructor of one of my controllers, like so:

protected SEMController()
{
    var currentUserIsAdmin = false;
    var currentUserName = System.Web.HttpContext.Current.User?.Identity?.Name;
    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(currentUserName))
    {
        var user = UserManager.Users
            .SingleOrDefault(u => 
            u.UserName.Equals(currentUserName, 
            StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase));
        if (user != null)
        {
            currentUserIsAdmin = UserManager.IsInRole(user.Id, UserType.Admin);
        }
    }
    TempData["CurrentUserIsAdmin"] = currentUserIsAdmin;
}

where the UserManager is a property of the same controller and it looks like this:

public ApplicationUserManager UserManager
{
    get
    {
        if (_userManager == null)
        {
            _userManager = HttpContext.GetOwinContext()
                .GetUserManager<ApplicationUserManager>();
        }
        return _userManager;
    }
    private set
    {
        _userManager = value;
    }
}

However, at the time the code is in the ctor, the HttpContext, which is a property of the Controller class and is of type System.Web.HttpContextBase and is not a System.Web.HttpContext instance, is null.

But since anyway the ASP.NET framework simply copies information from one place to another, the information they will have , at some point later in time, will be the same.

So, I was wondering if I could get a reference to the OwinContext by directly using the System.Web.HttpContext.Current property. However, that property is of type System.Web.HttpContext where as the GetOwinContext is an extension method on the type System.Web.HttpContextBase and I see that these two classes are no way related to each other.

So, I was wondering if there was a way to get from System.Web.HttpContext.Current to System.Web.HttpContextBase?

Answer 1

Yes, there is:

HttpContextBase httpContext = new HttpContextWrapper(HttpContext.Current);

And yes, the HttpContext property is always null during the construction of controllers. You can use it safely in (and after) the Controller.Initialize method.

Initializes data that might not be available when the constructor is called.