8

I should preface this with a disclaimer saying I'm new to ASP.NET development and don't really understand database contexts, despite spending the last hour reading documentation. When I built my ASP.NET MVC 5 application I chose to have individual user account authentication. Visual Studio created a file called IdentityModels.cs, and within there it defined an ApplicationUser class and a ApplicationDbContext class.

I've done some development work, and my CRUD controllers use ApplicationDbContext to talk to the database, by having this private property on every controller:

private ApplicationDbContext db = new ApplicationDbContext();

In the controller actions I then do things like:

return View(db.Trains.ToList());

I want to tidy this database context stuff up, but I need to understand it first. My main questions are:

  1. Is it okay to use just one database context for my entire application, like I'm doing now?
  2. Can I replace the ApplicationDbContext class defined in IdentityModels.cs with my own?
  3. The ApplicationDbContext class derives from IdentityDbContext<ApplicationUser>, does that mean I should have seperate database contexts for my user authentication stuff provided by Visual Studio, and my own code?

I think my end goal is to use my own database context, called DatabaseContext, which is then used in a base controller that all of my controllers inherit from. Then I only have one place where the database context is instantiated, instead of within every controller.

Who knows, I may be thinking the wrong way about this. Everybody seems to have their own preferred way of dealing with this.

Thank you!

Improve this question

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
8

Is it okay to use just one database context for my entire application, like I'm doing now?

  • If you decided that you are going to have access to DB directly from UI layer (Which is a separate discussion) than it is OK, since ApplicationDbContext is a private field of your controller and controllers are created and disposed per request - ApplicationDbContext will be created and disposed per request.

Can I replace the ApplicationDbContext class defined in IdentityModels.cs with my own?

  • You definitely can do it. It is used to create a UserStore which receives DbContext as an argument in constructor so this

var manager = new ApplicationUserManager(new UserStore<ApplicationUser>(new CustomDbContext("connection")));

will work. You still have to make sure that ApplicationUser is an entity in your custom context. Of course you can override/replace ApplicationUser as well.

The ApplicationDbContext class derives from IdentityDbContext, does that mean I should have seperate database contexts for my user authentication stuff provided by Visual Studio, and my own code?

By default Asp.Net Identity generates a new data base for you and ApplicationDbContext configured to work with this data base. You can store your authentication related entities in any other data base as well, you just need to make sure that all the related tables are there.You can also extend this data base to include other tables that you are using in your application so you could use the same context all over.

P.S: ApplicationDbContext doesn't have to implement IdentityDbContext<ApplicationUser>, Extending a default DbContext works as well (if you already generated a Db you will have to update it\use code migrations for the following to work):

 public class ApplicationDbContext : DbContext { public ApplicationDbContext() : base("DefaultConnection") { } public static ApplicationDbContext Create() { return new ApplicationDbContext(); } }
Improve this answer
Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

3 Comments

I don't think your last statement is correct. If you change ApplicationDbContext to derive from DbContext, you loose all the overrides made in IdentityDbContext that are essential to the correct functioning of the identity system. IdentityDbContext overrides OnModelCreating so there is an additional problem: if you need to override OnModelCreating in ApplicationDbContext you need to replicate the overrides in IdentityDbContext. github.com/aspnet/Identity/blob/dev/src/…
You should look at the last statement in a context of previous paragraph: "By default Asp.Net Identity generates a new data base for you and ApplicationDbContext configured to work with this data base. You can store your authentication related entities in any other data base as well, you just need to make sure that all the related tables are there.You can also extend this data base to include other tables that you are using in your application so you could use the same context all over."
So if user uses custom tables for storing identity related entities IdentityDbContext is pretty much useless, and all the data manipulations could be done through regular DbContext
1

I think you would like to create your own custom authentication database for login authentication. You need to follow the given instructions step by step. 1) you need to create your own class to implement custom authentication. for example, I am creating following student class .You can create this class in MODEL section in MVC.

class student{ public int rollno{get;set;} public string firstName{get;set;} public string lastName{get;set;}

2)now you going to create Your own dbcontext using identityDbContext for student class. you can create this class in App_Start section like this.

public class ApplicationDbContext : IdentityDbContext<student> { public ApplicationDbContext() : base() { } public static ApplicationDbContext Create() { return new ApplicationDbContext(); }

3) now you can use it home in controller as follow

public class HomeController : Controller { // GET: Home public async Task<ActionResult> Index() { var context = new ApplicationDbContext(); // DefaultConnection var store = new UserStore<student>(context); var manager = new UserManager<student>(store); var signInManager = new SignInManager<student, string>(manager, HttpContext.GetOwinContext().Authentication); var username = "Edward"; var email = "[email protected]"; var password = "Your password"; var user = await manager.FindByEmailAsync(email); if (user == null) { user = new student { UserName = username,//username ,Email are getting from identityDbContext and the other three RollNO,FirstName and LastName are your own Custom members.so like this you can extend your any kind of data you like add or extend with IdentityDbContext. Email = email, RollNo = "15", FirstName = "David", LastName = "Kandel" }; await manager.CreateAsync(user, password); } else { var result = await signInManager.PasswordSignInAsync(user.UserName, password, true, false); if (result == SignInStatus.Success) { return Content("Hello, " +user.rollno + "" + user.FirstName + " " + user.LastName); } } return Content("Hello, Index"); } }

Improve this answer

Comments

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.