Programming Visual Basic 2005

Add Roles to ASP.NET Accounts

Authentication is the process of identifying a user; authorization is the process of deciding which parts of your application that user can see and interact with. The forms-based security controls and database that comes with Visual Basic 2005 allows you to set authorization for specific users based on their being assigned to a role (such as guest, member, manager, etc). You do so in three steps: create the roles, assign permissions to each role, and then assign users to the roles. Any given user may be in more than one role (e.g., administrator and manager). The permissions you assign to each role may determine access to a page, or may change the content of a given page displayed to members of that role.

Create a New Application with Roles

To demonstrate how to create roles and assign users to those roles, you'll need to create a new application, ASPSecurityRoles. Begin by copying over the web site you used in the previous exercise (FormBasedSecurity), as shown in Figure 12-21.

Figure 12-21. Copy web site

Set Welcome as the Start page and run the program to make sure you can still log in. Open the WAT and click on the Security tab. In the second column (Roles), you'll see that roles are not enabled. Click on Enable Roles, as shown in Figure 12-22.

Figure 12-22. Enabling ...