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POSingle Responsibility Principle in MVC controllers. Critique required
 

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  1. POSingle Responsibility Principle in MVC controllers. Critique required
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    <p>In my MVC4 app, there are some actions that need to behave differently depending on whether you are logged in (FormsAuthentication in my case) or not.</p> <p>For example, I have an AccountController that has a method "RenderAccountAndProfile". If logged out, the corresponding partial view displays a log in prompt and button. If a user is logged in, the user's profile links appear, alongside a log out button.</p> <p>The approach I've taken thus far in projects is to simply have an if statement along the lines...</p> <pre><code> if (HttpContext.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated) { ... } else { ... } </code></pre> <p>However, I've just created what I think is a reasonably elegant alternative to this approach.</p> <p>I have created a new attribute called AnonymousUsersOnly, which is very simple:</p> <pre><code>public class AnonymousUsersOnlyAttribute : System.Web.Mvc.ActionMethodSelectorAttribute { public override bool IsValidForRequest(System.Web.Mvc.ControllerContext controllerContext, System.Reflection.MethodInfo methodInfo) { return !controllerContext.HttpContext.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated; } } </code></pre> <p>My AccountController class is decorated with the Authorize attribute. This then enabled me to have the following code:</p> <pre><code>[Authorize] public class AccountController : Controller { [AllowAnonymous] [AnonymousUsersOnly] [ActionName("RenderAccountAndProfile")] public ActionResult RenderAccountAndProfile_Anonymous() { // create a "logged out" view model return Content("**NOT LOGGED IN** - LOG IN HERE"); } [ActionName("RenderAccountAndProfile")] public ActionResult RenderAccountAndProfile_Authorized() { // create a "logged in" view model return Content("**LOGGED IN** - LOG OUT"); } } </code></pre> <p>I quite like this approach because my action methods conform to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_responsibility_principle" rel="nofollow">Single Responsibility Principle</a>. Each method now only deals with either a logged in situation or a logged out situation. I don't need any "if" statements directing the traffic any more.</p> <p>This ought to make Unit Testing easier too, since each method is now only concerned with one outcome, not two. We can write unit tests to test each outcome separately, calling different methods.</p> <p>Clearly, I can't have two methods with the same signature so that's why I have to use the ActionName attribute.</p> <p>I would appreciate your critique here. Do you think this is an elegant solution or not? What are the pros and cons to this approach? And what security implications/risks could there be with this?</p>
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    1. COWhy not just use the Authorize attribute at the action level, so that access is checked by mvc when calling the action and automatically take you to the login controller?
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    2. COThat's not quite the same functionality I desire though. I don't want a redirection to occur. What I've created above is a filter to select which action method to call depending on whether or not the user is authenticated. And also, decorating the entire class with [Authorize] and punching holes in it using [AllowAnonymous] is a safer approach because you cannot forget to apply authorization to all public methods. Otherwise, a single mistake causes your entire app to be compromised.
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      1. USSimonGoldstone
    3. COThe typical use case for this would be to decorate action methods that render partial views, rather than ViewResults, although it certainly wouldn't be limited to this. I personally plan to use this approach to display different content depending on whether or not the user is authorized.
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