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POC# MVC Site Forcing Users to Re-authenticate
 

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  1. POC# MVC Site Forcing Users to Re-authenticate
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    <p>I have a website written with the C# MVC 3 framework using Forms authentication. The site allows anonymous viewing for most of its content but has a directory containing PDF documents that require users to be authenticated to view. </p> <p>This works nearly all the time but occasionally an authenticated user will have a problem. When they click on a document they repeatedly get redirected to the login screen, forcing them to re-authenticate. Once they do they are then redirected to the document. Not a complete disaster but still annoying for users. Another scenario would be an authenticated user opening one of the PDF document just fine, but if they click on a link in that document that redirects them to another PDF document in the same directory, the system will then force them to re-authenticate. </p> <p>I first thought this may be a browser/cookie issue but from what I can gather by talking to users with this problem, it can happen with Firefox or IE, and with history/cookies enabled. Months ago I too experienced the problem in a hotel using their public WI-FI, but I've never experienced it at work using my office connection or at home.</p> <p>The website allows anonymous user access but the directory where the PDF documents reside contains the following web.config file:</p> <pre class="lang-xml prettyprint-override"><code>&lt;?xml version="1.0"?&gt; &lt;configuration&gt; &lt;system.web&gt; &lt;authentication&gt; &lt;deny users=”?” /&gt; &lt;/authentication&gt; &lt;/system.web&gt; &lt;/configuration&gt; </code></pre> <p>I am completely stumped as to what may be going on with these users. Any ideas would be extremely helpful.</p>
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    1. COYou might start by reading this post: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/BackToBasicsDynamicImageGenerationASPNETControllersRoutingIHttpHandlersAndRunAllManagedModulesForAllRequests.aspx
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      1. USCraig Stuntz
    2. COCraig, thanks for the advice. I read the article but unless I'm missing something, the PDF files seem to be getting handled fine except for the additional step some users experience which is having to re-authenticate before viewing them. The article also seemed to focus on dynamically created files, where my content is completely static. If there's something I missed I'd be grateful for any insight you could provide.
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      1. USedward
    3. COYou're in MVC but you have a web.config set to deny anonymous users? MVC typically uses the `[Authorize]` attribute on the Controller actions. I would delete that config file.
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      1. USmgnoonan
 

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