Any Asp.Net Guru's about

[eric_knapper]

I have an ASP.net app that has forms authentication setup for security. I have just added a web service to this app to be accessed from a desktop application. When I try to add a web reference too the service in the new desktop application it just throws the page to the login page of the website if I logon I can then browse to the web service but it does not find any of the methods to add from the service.

If I turn off forms authentication on the website it works fine I can browse to the web service when adding the reference and it picks it up and shows all the various methods.

So how can I get my webservice to work on a site that incorporates Forms authentication?

thanks
Eric

 

[eric_knapper]

After reading Goksly's reply last night I tried another approach and created a stand alone webservice project, created a new virtual directory for it on the host and uploaded it. Even though it was a separate application when browsing to the webservice it still redirected to the other applications login page!.

So at that point I was up against a problem with web.config file inheritance gave up for the night to try again today. I was just reading an MSDN article on configuration file hierarchy and inheritance http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178685.aspx when I noticed Akakjs's reply about using location tags.

So I cleaned up the system a bit first. I removed the new standalone Ws, in the original app I removed the Ws from that and replaced it with a default helloworld Ws that would go in the wwwroot. I then removed all existing authorization tags left the original <deny users="?"/> for the Forms authentication and then added this location tag at the top of the web.config

<location path="hello.asmx">
<system.web>
<authorization>
<allow users="*"/>
</authorization>
</system.web>
</location>

and that seems to have done the trick I still have forms login required for the existing site but the webservice is exposed to make reference too. Looks like I will have a problem with web.config inheritance when I add the next part of the project which another web application but that's a problem for another day

Thanks
Eric.