Detecting Web.Config Authentication Mode

Question

Say I have the following web.config:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
    <system.web>
        <authentication mode="Windows"></authentication>
    </system.web>
</configuration>

Using ASP.NET C#, how can I detect the Mode value of the Authentication tag?

Solution 1

Try Context.User.Identity.AuthenticationType

Go for PB's answer folks

Solution 2

The mode property from the authenticationsection: AuthenticationSection.Mode Property (System.Web.Configuration). And you can even modify it.

// Get the current Mode property.
AuthenticationMode currentMode = 
    authenticationSection.Mode;

// Set the Mode property to Windows.
authenticationSection.Mode = 
    AuthenticationMode.Windows;

This article describes how to get a reference to the AuthenticationSection.

Solution 3

Import the System.Web.Configuration namespace and do something like:

var configuration = WebConfigurationManager.OpenWebConfiguration("/");
var authenticationSection = (AuthenticationSection)configuration.GetSection("system.web/authentication");
if (authenticationSection.Mode == AuthenticationMode.Forms)
{
  //do something
}

Solution 4

You can also get the authentication mode by using the static ConfigurationManager class to get the section and then the enum AuthenticationMode.

AuthenticationMode authMode = ((AuthenticationSection) ConfigurationManager.GetSection("system.web/authentication")).Mode;

The difference between WebConfigurationManager and ConfigurationManager

---

If you want to retrieve the name of the constant in the specified enumeration you can do this by using the Enum.GetName(Type, Object) method

Enum.GetName(typeof(AuthenticationMode), authMode); // e.g. "Windows"

View more solutions

Comments

[GateKiller]

I have accepted your answer because yours was the quickest and worked :)

[Joe]

No this doesn't work in the general case. An ASP.NET app inherits settings from machine.Config and from all other web.config files higher in the virtual directory tree: see msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178685.aspx Your technique only looks at the lowest web.config file.

[Joe]

This is wrong. In the general case IIdentity.AuthenticationType can contain any string, which may not necessarily match the authentication mode set in web.config. I'd use the solution from @pb.

[Anthony Mason]

XPath is not something that should be used to parse the configuration by any means. Utilizing the libraries provided by MS is a far more efficient and maintainable approach. The comment above is a perfect example of why not to use it as well as the fact that not all platforms will have necessarily utilize the configuration documents for authentication or other settings; another valid case is if the location of the authentication type is changed, then you must replace a hardcoded string, recompile, then redistribute.

[Michael Freidgeim]

You should use application root "~" instead of site root "/", but better to call WebConfigurationManager.GetSection("system.web/authenticatio‌​n") directly