Is Roles.IsUserInRole behaving as expected in the following simple scenario? - asp.net-2.0

Question

In a custom role provider (inheriting from RoleProvider) in .NET 2.0, the IsUserInRole method has been hard-coded to always return true:
public override bool IsUserInRole(string username, string roleName) { return true; }
In an ASP.NET application configured to use this role provider, the following code returns true (as expected):
Roles.IsUserInRole("any username", "any rolename"); // results in true
However, the following code returns false:
Roles.IsUserInRole("any rolename"); // results in false
Note that User.IsInRole("any rolename") is also returning false.
Is this the expected behavior?
Is it incorrect to assume that the overload that only takes a role name would still be invoking the overridden IsUserInRole?
Update: Note that there doesn't seem to be an override available for the version that takes a single string, which has led to my assumption in #2.

Answer 1

I looked at Roles.IsUserInRole(string rolename) in .net reflector, and it resolves to the following:
public static bool IsUserInRole(string roleName)
{
return IsUserInRole(GetCurrentUserName(), roleName);
}
I would take a look at your current user. Here's why:
private static string GetCurrentUserName()
{
IPrincipal currentUser = GetCurrentUser();
if ((currentUser != null) && (currentUser.Identity != null))
{
return currentUser.Identity.Name;
}
return string.Empty;
}
I would be willing to bet this is returning an empty string because you either don't have a Current User, or its name is an empty string or null.
In the IsUserInRole(string username, string roleName) method, there is the following block of code right near the beginning:
if (username.Length < 1)
{
return false;
}
If your GetCurrentUserName() doesn't return anything meaningful, then it will return false before it calls your overridden method.
Moral to take away from this: Reflector is a great tool :)

Answer 2

Also beware if you have selected cacheRolesInCookie="true" in the RoleManager config. If you have added a new role to the database, it might be looking at the cached version in the cookie.
I had this problem and the solution was to delete the cookie and re-login.

Answer 3

This may help someone - be aware:
If you are using the login control to authenticate - the username entered into the control becomes the HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.Name which is used in the Roles.IsUserInRole(string rolename) and more specifically - the membership's GetUser() method. So if this is the case make sure you override the Authenticate event, validate the user in this method and set the username to a value that your custom membership provider can use.
protected void crtlLoginUserLogin_Authenticate(object sender, AuthenticateEventArgs e)
{
bool blnAuthenticate = false;
string strUserName = crtlLoginUserLogin.UserName;
if (IsValidEmail(strUserName))
{
//if more than one user has email address - must authenticate by username.
MembershipUserCollection users = Membership.FindUsersByEmail(strUserName);
if (users.Count > 1)
{
crtlLoginUserLogin.FailureText = "We are unable to determine which account is registered to that email address. Please enter your Username to login.";
}
else
{
strUserName = Membership.GetUserNameByEmail(strUserName);
blnAuthenticate = Membership.ValidateUser(strUserName, crtlLoginUserLogin.Password);
//setting the userLogin to the correct user name (only on successful authentication)
if (blnAuthenticate)
{
crtlLoginUserLogin.UserName = strUserName;
}
}
}
else
{
blnAuthenticate = Membership.ValidateUser(strUserName, crtlLoginUserLogin.Password);
}
e.Authenticated = blnAuthenticate;
}