Upgrading to ASP.NET 4.5/MVC 4 forms authentication fails

Question

I've just downoaded a VS 2012 along with ASP.NET 4.5 and MVC 4.0 and was kicking the tires with a sample app and found that the forms authentication that works perfectly with ASP.NET 4.0/MVC 3 no longer seems to work with the latest release.

When I make a call to the Login function in the action controller, the WebSecurity.Login call fails:

public ActionResult Login(LoginModel model, string returnUrl)
{
    if (ModelState.IsValid && WebSecurity.Login(model.UserName, model.Password, persistCookie: model.RememberMe))
    {
        return RedirectToLocal(returnUrl);
    }

    // If we got this far, something failed, redisplay form
    ModelState.AddModelError("", "The user name or password provided is incorrect.");
    return View(model);
}

I've replaced this code with the equivalent in my VS 2010 source, and that also fails (using the now deprecated FormsAuthentication.Authenticate function).

My question is: Has anybody ported a MVC3 to MVC4 app and found a workaround to this issue? I'm using IIS Express, so I guess that may be causing some problem somehow, but if you have any ideas, I'd appreciate it.

I copied my configuration from my working asp.net 4/MVC3 app as follows, but no luck (here's the relevant parts):

  <connectionStrings>
    <add name="DefaultConnection" connectionString="Data Source=tcp:sql2k1201.dbprovider.net;Initial Catalog=SQL2012_db;User ID=SQL2012_db_user;Password=dbpassword;" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
  </connectionStrings>

  <system.web>
    <compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.5" />
    <httpRuntime targetFramework="4.5" />

    <authentication mode="Forms">
      <forms loginUrl="~/Account/Login" timeout="2880"/>
    </authentication>

    <membership>
      <providers>
        <clear/>
        <add name="AspNetSqlMembershipProvider" type="System.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProvider" connectionStringName="DefaultConnection"
           enablePasswordRetrieval="false" enablePasswordReset="true" requiresQuestionAndAnswer="false" requiresUniqueEmail="false"
           maxInvalidPasswordAttempts="5" minRequiredPasswordLength="6" minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters="0" passwordAttemptWindow="10"
           applicationName="/" />
      </providers>
    </membership>

    <profile>
      <providers>
        <clear/>
        <add name="AspNetSqlProfileProvider" type="System.Web.Profile.SqlProfileProvider" connectionStringName="DefaultConnection" applicationName="/" />
      </providers>
    </profile>

    <roleManager enabled="true">
      <providers>
        <clear/>
        <add name="AspNetSqlRoleProvider" type="System.Web.Security.SqlRoleProvider" connectionStringName="DefaultConnection" applicationName="/" />
      </providers>
    </roleManager>

Answer 1

If your forms authentication ticket needs to be shared between applications using an older version of the .NET framework, you must explicitly configure your .NET 4.5 apps to use the earlier machine compatibility modes, or they will not be able to encrypt/decrypt the forms authentication ticket.

In your .net 4.5 application's web.config, set the compatibility mode attribute:

<system.web>
 <machineKey compatibilityMode="Framework20SP2" /> 
</system.web>

This will allow your .NET 4.5 apps to work with forms authentication tickets generated by earlier .NET versions.

Note: If any of your servers do not have .NET Framework 2.0 SP2 installed, you will need to set the compatibility mode to "Framework20SP1" instead.

MSDN - MachineKeySection.CompatibilityMode Property

Answer 2

The issue here is that the default mvc4 internet template is using SimpleMembership to manage membership/roles information. The code in the template has assumption of this and can only work with simplemembership. When you install universal providers the account controller code blows up since it cannot understand universal providers. Look at this post which explains further on this scenario http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2012/08/29/simplemembership-membership-providers-universal-providers-and-the-new-asp-net-4-5-web-forms-and-asp-net-mvc-4-templates.aspx