Get current MembershipUser in Forms Authentication

Question

I would like to get the current MembershipUser from my page.

Membership.GetUser();

returns null.

Cannot use

HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.Name

as it returns my profile name as per my configuration to get User Name also.

How do I get my current user?

Update: Membership provider is SqlMembershipProvider

Answer 1

1. Membership.GetUser() will only work for an authenticated user. Otherwise, it's going to return null. To verify you're dealing with an authenticated request call "User.Identity.IsAuthenticated" on the page. If you've got an authenticated request, but Membership.GetUser() is still returning null, then that means the username associated with the authenticated user can't be found in the Membership datasource. Verify the username of the authenticated user with "User.Identity.Name".

2. If you're calling one of the Membership.GetUser() overloads which takes the username and it's returning null, then that user doesn't exist in the Membership datasource (or we've got a bug). One way to easily verify this is to try a Membership.CreateUser() with the same username. If this doesn't throw an error because of a duplicate user, then you know the user never existed in the first place.

3. Membership.GetUser() should have never worked for an anonymous user. No support was built into Membership for handling this case.