ASP.NET Forms Authentication timeout

Handling Non-Permanent, Sliding Expiration Tickets

Forms Authentication uses an in-memory cookie for the ticket, unless you make it persistent (for example, FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie(username, true) will make it persistent). By default, the ticket uses a sliding expiration. Each time a request is processed, the ticket will be sent down with a new expiration date. Once that date expires, the cookie and the ticket are both invalid and the user will be redirected to the login page.

Forms Authentication has no built-in handling for redirecting pages that have already been rendered, that sit longer than the timeout. You will need to add this yourself. At the simplest level, you will need to start a timer with the document loads, using JavaScript.

<script type="text/javascript">  var redirectTimeout = <%FormsAuthentication.Timeout.TotalMilliseconds%>  var redirectTimeoutHandle = setTimeout(function() { window.location.href = '<%FormsAuthentication.LoginUrl%>'; }, redirectTimeout);</script>

With the above, if your page is not refreshed or changed, or redirectTimeoutHandle is not otherwise cancelled (with clearTimeout(redirectTimeoutHandle);), it will be redirected to the login page. The FormsAuth ticket should have already expired so you shouldn't have to do anything with that.

The trick here is whether or not your site does AJAX work, or you consider other client-side events as active user activity (moving or clicking the mouse, etc). You will have to track those events manually and when they occur, reset the redirectTimeoutHandle. For example, I have a site that uses AJAX heavily, so the page doesn't physically refresh often. Since I use jQuery, I can have it reset the timeout every time an AJAX request is issued, which should, in effect, result in the page being redirected if they sit on a single page and don't do any updates.

Here's a complete initialization script.

$(function() {   var _redirectTimeout = 30*1000; // thirty minute timeout   var _redirectUrl = '/Accounts/Login'; // login URL   var _redirectHandle = null;   function resetRedirect() {       if (_redirectHandle) clearTimeout(_redirectHandle);       _redirectHandle = setTimeout(function() { window.location.href = _redirectUrl; }, _redirectTimeout);   }   $.ajaxSetup({complete: function() { resetRedirect(); } }); // reset idle redirect when an AJAX request completes   resetRedirect(); // start idle redirect timer initially.});

By simply sending an AJAX request, the client-side timeout and the ticket (in the form of a cookie) will both be updated, and your user should be fine.

However, if user activity does not cause the FormsAuth ticket to be updated, the user will appear to be logged out the next time they request a new page (either by navigating or via AJAX). In that case, you'll need to "ping" your web application when user activity occurs with an AJAX call to, say, a custom handler, an MVC action, etc. to keep your FormsAuth ticket up to date. Please note that you need to be careful when pinging the server to keep up-to-date, as you don't want to flood the server with requests as they, say, move the cursor around or click on things. Here's an addition to the init script above that adds resetRedirect to mouse clicks on the document, in addition to the initial page load and AJAX requests.

$(function() {   $(document).on('click', function() {      $.ajax({url: '/ping.ashx', cache: false, type: 'GET' }); // because of the $.ajaxSetup above, this call should result in the FormsAuth ticket being updated, as well as the client redirect handle.   });});

Handling "Permanent" Tickets

You need the ticket to be sent to the client as a persistent cookie, with an arbitrarily long timeout. You should be able to leave the client code and web.config as they are, but handle the user's preference for a permanent ticket separately in your login logic. Here, you'll need to modify the ticket. Below is logic in a login page to do such a thing:

// assumes we have already successfully authenticatedif (rememberMe){    var ticket = new FormsAuthenticationTicket(2, userName, DateTime.Now, DateTime.Now.AddYears(50), true,                                               string.Empty, FormsAuthentication.FormsCookiePath);    var cookie = new HttpCookie(FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName, FormsAuthentication.Encrypt(ticket))                     {                         Domain = FormsAuthentication.CookieDomain,                         Expires = DateTime.Now.AddYears(50),                         HttpOnly = true,                         Secure = FormsAuthentication.RequireSSL,                         Path = FormsAuthentication.FormsCookiePath                     };    Response.Cookies.Add(cookie);    Response.Redirect(FormsAuthentication.GetRedirectUrl(userName, true));}else{    FormsAuthentication.RedirectFromLoginPage(userName, false);}

Bonus: Storing Roles in Ticket

You asked if you can store roles in the ticket/cookie so you don't have to look them up again. Yes, that is possible, but there are some considerations.

1. You should limit the amount of data you put in the ticket, because cookies can only be so large
2. You should consider whether or not roles should be cached at the client.

To elaborate on #2:

You shouldn't implicitly trust claims that you receive from a user. For example, if a user logs in and is an Admin, and checks "remember me" thus receiving a persistent, long-term ticket, they will be an Admin forever (or until that cookie expires or is erased). If someone removes them from that role in your database, the application will still think they are an Admin if they have the old ticket. So, you may be better off getting the user's roles every time, but caching the roles in the application instance for a period of time to minimize database work.

Technically, this is also an issue for the ticket itself. Again, you shouldn't trust that just because they have a valid ticket that the account is still valid. You can use similar logic as the roles: Check that the user referenced by the ticket still exists and is valid (that it's not locked out, disabled, or deleted) by querying your actual database, and just caching the db results for a period of time to improve performance. This is what I do in my applications, where the ticket is treated as an identity claim (similarly, username/password is another type of claim). Here is simplified logic in the global.asax.cs (or in an HTTP module):

protected void Application_AuthenticateRequest(Object sender, EventArgs e){  var application = (HttpApplication)sender;  var context = application.Context;    EnsureContextUser(context);}private void EnsureContextUser(HttpContext context){   var unauthorizedUser = new GenericPrincipal(new GenericIdentity(string.Empty, string.Empty), new string[0]);   var user = context.User;   if (user != null && user.Identity.IsAuthenticated && user.Identity is FormsIdentity)   {      var ticket = ((FormsIdentity)user.Identity).Ticket;      context.User = IsUserStillActive(context, ticket.Name) ? new GenericPrincipal(user.Identity, GetRolesForUser(context, ticket.Name)) : unauthorizedUser;      return;    }   context.User = unauthorizedUser;}private bool IsUserStillActive(HttpContext context, string username){   var cacheKey = "IsActiveFor" + username;   var isActive = context.Cache[cacheKey] as bool?   if (!isActive.HasValue)   {      // TODO: look up account status from database      // isActive = ???      context.Cache[cacheKey] = isActive;   }   return isActive.GetValueOrDefault();}private string[] GetRolesForUser(HttpContext context, string username){   var cacheKey = "RolesFor" + username;   var roles = context.Cache[cacheKey] as string[];   if (roles == null)   {      // TODO: lookup roles from database      // roles = ???      context.Cache[cacheKey] = roles;   }   return roles;}

Of course, you may decide you don't care about any of that and just want to trust the ticket, and store the roles in the ticket as well. First, we update your login logic from above:

// assumes we have already successfully authenticatedif (rememberMe){    var ticket = new FormsAuthenticationTicket(2, userName, DateTime.Now, DateTime.Now.AddYears(50), true, GetUserRolesString(), FormsAuthentication.FormsCookiePath);    var cookie = new HttpCookie(FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName, FormsAuthentication.Encrypt(ticket))                     {                         Domain = FormsAuthentication.CookieDomain,                         Expires = DateTime.Now.AddYears(50),                         HttpOnly = true,                         Secure = FormsAuthentication.RequireSSL,                         Path = FormsAuthentication.FormsCookiePath                     };    Response.Cookies.Add(cookie);    Response.Redirect(FormsAuthentication.GetRedirectUrl(userName, true));}else{    var ticket = new FormsAuthenticationTicket(2, userName, DateTime.Now, DateTime.Now.AddMinutes(FormsAuthentication.Timeout), false, GetUserRolesString(), FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName);    var cookie = new HttpCookie(FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName, FormsAuthentication.Encrypt(ticket))       {          Domain = FormsAuthentication.CookieDomain,          HttpOnly = true,          Secure = FormsAuthentication.RequireSSL,          Path = FormsAuthentication.FormsCookiePath       };    Response.Cookies.Add(cookie);    Response.Redirect(FormsAuthentication.GetRedirectUrl(userName, false));}

Add method:

   private string GetUserRolesString(string userName)   {        // TODO: get roles from db and concatenate into string   }

Update your global.asax.cs to get roles out of ticket and update HttpContext.User:

protected void Application_AuthenticateRequest(Object sender, EventArgs e){  var application = (HttpApplication)sender;  var context = application.Context;    if (context.User != null && context.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated && context.User.Identity is FormsIdentity)  {      var roles = ((FormsIdentity)context.User.Identity).Ticket.Data.Split(",");      context.User = new GenericPrincipal(context.User.Identity, roles);  }}

For A you will want to set the session timeout variable to however long you want the user to stay logged in for The Timeout property specifies the time-out period assigned to the Session object for the application, in minutes. If the user does not refresh or request a page within the time-out period, the session ends.

For part B I would suggest storing that value in a session variable(or cookie but that doesn't reside on the server) and checking for that value in the Session_End event in the global.asax file. If it is set then renew the session.

The Session_End event doesn't fire when the browser is closed, it fires when the server hasn't gotten a request from the user in a specific time period (by default 20 minutes).