How to Authenticate User using a customed Database

If you want to authenticate a user against your own custom database then you can use the Authenticate event of the Login control. Here is a small example that shows how to achieve it.

// Use Authenticate event if you want to do custom authentication protected void Login1_Authenticate(object sender, AuthenticateEventArgs e) { string userName = Login1.UserName; string password = Login1.Password; bool result = UserLogin(userName, password); if (result) e.Authenticated = true; else e.Authenticated = false; } private bool UserLogin(string userName, string password) { string query = @"SELECT UserName FROM Users WHERE UserName = @UserName AND Password = @Password"; string connectionString = (string)ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["ConnectionString"].ConnectionString; SqlConnection myConnection = new SqlConnection(connectionString); SqlCommand myCommand = new SqlCommand(query, myConnection); myCommand.Parameters.AddWithValue("@UserName", userName); myCommand.Parameters.AddWithValue("@Password", password); myConnection.Open(); string userId = (string) myCommand.ExecuteScalar(); myConnection.Close(); if (userId != null && userId.Length > 0) return true; else return false; }

As you can see that I am simply sending the values from the Login control to UserLogin method and returns true or false based on the authentication status.

When using custom authentication always remember to set the Authenticated property of the Login control to true or false based on the result of authentication. Also when authenticating a user against a custom database you don't need to provide the membership settings in the web.config file.