Console Application with ASP.NET Authentication

Question

Here's the situation, I've got a console application that needs to run once a day and make a few requests to pages that require authentication to view. The pages are hosted in a really basic ASP.Net Web Application.

So, I know that in order for the requests to go through successfully I have to authenticate with the server. So I've hooked up the console application to the ASP.Net Membership Provider I'm using for the web app and it successfully determines if a set of a credentials are valid. However, after calling Membership.ValidateUser() any requests I make just get the login screen. After doing some reading it seems that this is because I'm missing the important cookie information that persists my login or what-have-you.

I'm using a basic WebClient to make the requests and then reading/discarding the result.

So the meat of the question is this: Is there a simple way to validate the login information and hold on to it so that I can make the requests successfully, or is this the exact same case as the other two questions I found that require the WebClient to make a "manual" login request to the login.aspx page and try to hold on to the cookie from there?

The questions I'm referencing are:

Authenticating ASP.NET MVC user from a WPF application

and

Login to website and use cookie to get source for another page

Have you seen this walkthrough? msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb515342.aspx — David
– David, Commented Jan 5, 2011 at 20:30

Greg · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-05 20:32:08Z

0

With FormsAuthentication the webserver has to generate a Forms Authentication Ticket for you. The best (only?) way to do this is to log into the site, so I'd just log in like the other questions.

answered Jan 5, 2011 at 20:32

Greg

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Toby Artisan · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-18 17:07:19Z

If the intent is to send data to the server and/or get data from the server, then the most logical architecture is probably to create a web service using either ASMX or WCF. Then configure the service to use a security token, such as a username token or a SAML token. This will make the client less likely to break when the server code changes its data model.

Otherwise, if you wish to use only a basic WebClient, then you will have to find a way to pass your credentials to the login page and retain the login cookie that is returned from the login request. Then, make sure that the login cookie is included on all subsequent requets, similar to the Stack Overflow question that you referenced, "Login to website and use cookie to get source for another page".

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