ASP.Net 2.0 Membership Login Controls

When Microsoft introduced its ASP.Net 2.0 frameworks for developers it included a new set of controls as Login Controls. Login Controls consist of following set of server component along with interface templates:

1. Login
2. LoginView
3. PasswordRecovery
4. LoginStatus
5. LoginName
6. CreateUserWizard
7. ChangePassword 

All above Login Controls have their own significance in a web site developed to fulfill user membership features. Membership features include:

• User Registration
• Reset new Password
• Forgot Password
• Login status to display login/logout link accordingly
• Login Control to enable user into his/her member account

ASP.Net membership login controls use default sql provider to manage users, roles and profiles. When you configure login controls on ASP.Net web page and view this page in web browser it automatically creates a default database file in datadirectory App_Data of web application. It appends web.config connectionstring section to add sql connection string for default database Aspnetdb.mdf that we discussed earlier in How to Create Aspnetdb.

ASP.Net 2.0 frameworks include scripts for default database aspnetdb having all necessary tables providing facility to register users and manage roles for authentication.

Login Control

Login control provides the user interface template along with loggedIn event to authenticate a registered user.

LoginStatus Control

Login Status control displays the login or logout link control according to the status of user. If user has logged In the web application successfully then it displays the logout button otherwise it displays login button.

CreateUserWizard Control

Create User Wizard Control provides a wizard template with validated user input fields that include username, password, confirm password, valid email id. CreatUserWizard control also includes a secret question field and its answer field that helps user to recover his password when forget the password.

PasswordRecovery Control

PasswordRecovery control is also a wizard control that helps in retrieving the password. It asks the username first to fetch the security question for that registered username. If username exists in the database then PasswordRecovery Control asks the related security question. If security answer matches then it sends an email having the recovered password at the same email id that user adds at the time of create user wizard.

ChangePassword Control

ChangePassword Control enables the loggedin authenticated user to change the password of his membership account.

LoginName Control

Login Name control returns the name of the currently logged in user.

LoginView Control

LoginView Control is like a panel control that hides the authenticated controls placed inside it. LoginView Control displays and enables the control placed inside it when authenticated logs in successfully.

Continue to next tutorial: ASP.Net 2.0 Membership CreateUser Wizard Control to learn how to create a user registration form using ceate user control.