The Problem Solver

In my last two blog entries I showed how to use the ASP.Net membership provider in a Windows application. Now that we can add a validate users we might want to start using roles as well. To work with security roles we need to use the class System.Web.Security.Roles. This class works pretty much in the same way as the Membership provider. To add a new role we use the CreateRole() function and to associate a user with this role we use the AddUserToRole() function. So adding the Developer role to my previously created user account can be done with the following code:

        Roles.CreateRole("Developer")
        Roles.AddUserToRole("Maurice", "Developer")

However if you try this you will receive an error: “The Role Manager feature has not been enabled.”. To enable roles we need to add one more thing to the app.config. Add following line to the <system.web> section:

<roleManager enabled="true" />

Once this is done you are ready to add roles and associate users with there roles.

Use the following code to check if a user has a specific role:

        If Roles.IsUserInRole("Maurice", "Developer") Then
            Console.WriteLine("Is a developer.")
        Else
            Console.WriteLine("Doesn't write code.")
        End If
 

Of course this leaves us with a place to store the current user name so we know which user is logged in when we need to check for a specific role. The IsUserInRole() function has an additional overload that takes only a single parameter, the role name. Next time more about how to use this overload.

Maurice de Beijer
www.TheProblemSolver.nl