Membership roles made easy with Razor syntax in WebMatrix

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Let’s see how easy it is to restrict access to certain pages based on roles. 

First, if you don’t have WebMatrix, DOWNLOAD IT HERE.  I am using the WebMatrix 2 Beta version released in September 2011.

We’re going to use the photo gallery site created in a previous post as a starting point.

First Run your website from WebMatrix and click Login.

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Click Register.

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Create an account by entering an email and password.  Notice the photo gallery template has CAPTCHA verification built-in, so you can tell whether a user is a human or computer by asking the user to read and enter extra words that a computer wouldn’t be able to read.

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All you would need to do is uncomment out the corresponding code in Register.cshtml and replace the public and private keys, and register at reCAPTCHA.net

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Notice under Databases, your newly created account is now under UserProfiles.  Take note of the UserId.

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In your Databases, under webpages_Roles, type in a role name under RoleName (e.g. admin).

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Hitting <Enter> will automatically assign a RoleId.  Remember this role ID.

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Double-click webpages_UsersInRole.  We would like to assign our user with UserId 1 to the admin role, which corresponds to RoleId 1.  Enter these corresponding ID numbers to assign the user to the desired role. 

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Now we’re going to exit our Databases and go back Files.  Right-click on your website name and create a New File…

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Create a CSHTML file called AdminOnly.cshtml.  This will be the file only a user who is an admin can access.

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Create another file and name it AdminError.cshtml.  This will be the file to which the user who is not allowed to access the previous file gets redirected.

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Enter the following Razor syntax (or some variation thereof using your friend, IntelliSense) into your AdminOnly.cshtml file:

@if (Roles.IsUserInRole(“admin”))
{<span>welcome to the jungle </span>}
else
{Response.Redirect(“~/AdminError”);}

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Enter the following Razor syntax (or some variation) into your AdminError.cshtml file:

<p>You must log in as an admin to access that page.</p>

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Save both files.  Now try to access https://localhost:xxxx/AdminOnly (the local URL and xxxx can be found under Site above Files, Databases, and Reports or when you hit Run).

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Log out of the admin account and try to access the same URL.

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