I had to integrate YAF with my existing application that already used ASP .Net membership. I checked other forum posts on the subject and also the Wiki articles, and it seems to me that they are a bit dated and not compatible with the new provider model based authentication, so I rolled my own.

My approach basically involves creating a web service to handle authentication and user creation. I chose this approach because I wanted to keep YAF separate from my application (much easier to upgrade), yet wanted users to have a seamless experience between the two applications. With this approach, the forums would be hosted in a separate sub domain.

Step 1:

Generate a machine key for yourself from here  or here  and update the web.config in both your applications.

Step 2:

Open YAF solution in Visual Studio and create a new folder under YetAnotherForum.Net website. Within this folder, create a new Web Service, with the name YafMembership.asmx. Paste the code from the attached file YafMembership.cs into it.

Step 3:

In your main application, add a web reference to this newly created web service with the name 'Forums'

Note1: be sure to add a web reference and not a service reference.

Note2: depending of whether your main application is a web project or a website, the actual process of adding a web reference might vary a little - please check MSDN for help)

Step 4:

In your main application, paste the following code where you authenticate your user. This code should follow after you have authenticated the user. You will have to modify this code (especially the parts enclosed with

[h]attributes[/h][/code]) so that its relevant to your application.

    [code]bool CreateForumsTicket = false;

    Forums.AuthHeader AuthHeader = new Forums.AuthHeader();
    AuthHeader.SecretKey = FormsAuthentication.HashPasswordForStoringInConfigFile([h]UserName[/h], "md5");

    Forums.YafMembership Forums = new Forums.YafMembership();
    Forums.AuthHeaderValue = AuthHeader;

    if (Forums.Login([h]UserName[/h], [h]Password[/h]))
    {
        CreateForumsTicket = true;
    }
    else
    {
        [h]MembershipUser user = Membership.GetUser(UserName);
        Forums.MembershipCreateStatus Status = Forums.CreateUser(UserName, Password, UserEmail, PasswordQuestion, PasswordAnswer) ;[/h]
        if (Status == Forums.MembershipCreateStatus.Success)
            CreateForumsTicket = true;
        else{
            [h]// Add the code to log the failure using whatever error logging mechanism you use[/h]
        }
    }

    if (CreateForumsTicket)
    {
        FormsAuthenticationTicket ticket = new FormsAuthenticationTicket(1, UserName, DateTime.Now, DateTime.Now.AddMinutes(30), false, "", "/");
        string strEncTicket = FormsAuthentication.Encrypt(ticket);
        HttpCookie authCookie = new HttpCookie(".YAFNET_Authentication", strEncTicket);
        authCookie.Path = "/";
        authCookie.Domain = [h]"YourDomain.com"[/h];
        HttpContext.Current.Response.Cookies.Add(authCookie);
    }

Step 5:

You might also want to add code similar to the above after you have created a new user in your application

Step 6 (optional):

In the Forums folder that you created in Step 2, create a web.config as shown below

<configuration>
  <system.web>
    <webServices>
      <protocols>
        <remove name="HttpPost" />
        <remove name="HttpGet" />
        <remove name="Documentation" />
        <add name="HttpPostLocalhost" />
      </protocols>
    </webServices>
  </system.web>
</configuration>

Note: if you ever need to re-generate the proxy class created in step 3, make sure you comment out the

<remove name="Documentation" />[/code] node in the above web.config.

🅱Step 7:[/b]
Go to the YAF admin area, Host Settings -> Login/Registration Settings and check 'Disable New Registrations'. This will prevent the 'Register' link from appearing. However, the user can still manually enter the registration URL and register - in order to prevent that, open YetAnotherForum.Net -> Pages -> Register.ascx.cs and in the Page_Load event redirect the user to the registration URL of your main site
[code]Response.Redirect([h]"YourDomain.com"[/h]);

Step 8:

Go to the YAF admin area, Host Settings -> Login/Registration Settings and modify 'Custom Login Redirect Url' so that users are directed to your main site for logging in.

That's about it.

(pauses)

You're welcome

I am trying what you did in authenticating from outside of YAF. I have read your article many times and tried to do what every you told. but i think there are some differences between our YAF versions, i did some changes to bring up the application without errors but as long as i call YafMembership webservice i give an error for missing a parameter in SQL.

i tried to change your:

ForumPage currentPage = new ForumPage();

YafContext PageContext = currentPage.PageContext;

bool Result = PageContext.CurrentMembership.ValidateUser(UserName, Password);

To:

YAF.Providers.Membership.YafMembershipProvider ymp = new YAF.Providers.Membership.YafMembershipProvider();

bool Result = ymp.ValidateUser(UserName, Password);

in order to get rid of errors for FORUMPAGE() class. but now i'm giving the sql error below:

System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Procedure or function 'yaf_prov_getuser' expects parameter '@ApplicationName', which was not supplied.

i checked the source and found that the YAF.Providers.Membership.YafMembershipProvider.ValidateUser sends the @ApplicationName however it doesn't have it in parameters.

Now. do you have any idea? have you checked the problem in 1.9.5.5 ?

Morteza

mertez@gmail.com

Anyways, I did decide to upgrade to 1.9.6 Beta and came across this issue myself. The fix though, is quiet simple really - all you need to get the current page context, is to use

YafContext.Current

ForumPage currentPage = new ForumPage();
YafContext PageContext = currentPage.PageContext;

Please find the new YafMembership.cs attached. Its my guess that the above fix would work for 1.9.5 as well (but its just a guess)

Jaben and team, thanks for the awesome forums!

I didn't need to add another cookie though -- with the same machine key, YAF picked up the creds of the user when they signed into my system.

        [WebMethod]
        public bool IsUserRegistered(string UserName)
        {
            MembershipUser user;
            user = YafContext.Current.Get<MembershipProvider>().GetUser(UserName,false);
            if (user == null)
            {
                return false;
            }
            else
            {
                return true;
            }
        }

        [WebMethod]
        public MembershipCreateStatus CreateUser(string UserName, string Password, string email, string PasswordQuestion, string PasswordAnswer)
        {
            MembershipCreateStatus Status = MembershipCreateStatus.ProviderError;
            if (!IsUserRegistered(UserName))
            {
                YafContext.Current.Get<MembershipProvider>().CreateUser(UserName, Password, email, PasswordQuestion, PasswordAnswer, true, null, out Status);
                if (!RoleMembershipHelper.IsUserInRole(UserName, "Registered"))
                {
                    RoleMembershipHelper.AddUserToRole(UserName, "Registered");
                }
            }
            return Status;
        }

BTW, yeah for SOAP! :lol:

Thanks in advance