In my previous post on ASP MVC I showed How To Add Captcha to ASP MVC Web Application, but even if you use captcha you still want to make sure the user email is real and not just a fake one.
In order to make sure the user has gave you his real email you need to use Email Confirmation mechanism to your site.
ASP MVC is doing some of the work for us, when a user is register to your site is assign with a unique ID (Guid) property called - ProviderUserKey
I’ll use this value to verify the account.
Step 1: Create new ASP MVC 3 Web Site
Step 2: Modify Web.Config with SMTP Settings
Before we get started with the Email Confirmation implementation we need to define our email settings, to do so I’ve used my Gmail account (just for this test) and add those values in the web.config just below the configuration tag.
<configuration>
<system.net>
<mailSettings>
<smtp deliveryMethod="Network">
<network host="smtp.gmail.com" port="587"
userName="[YourName@Gmail.com]"
password="[Your Password]" />
</smtp>
</mailSettings>
</system.net>
Step 3: Add Confirmation View
After the user has register we want to redirect him to a confirmation page and tell him to check his email for the confirmation link, so
Add new View called – Confirmation
@{
ViewBag.Title = "Email Confirmation";
}
<h2>
Confirmation</h2>
<p>
Thank you for registering. Please check your email for a confirmation
request with a link that will confirm your account. Once you click the
link, your registration will be complete.</p>
In the AccountController add result for Confirmation
public ActionResult Confirmation()
{
return View();
}
Step 4: Send Mail
Before changing the registration we need to create the email functionality, this confirmation
email will contain the ProviderUserKey and a direct link to our site.
The SendConfirmationEmail method will receive the UserName, using Membership.GetUser
we’ll be able to get all the information on that user and of course the ProviderUserKey.
I’ve built the confirmation url using HttpContext and combine the User Guid ID and the site url.
var verifyUrl =
HttpContext.Current.Request.Url.GetLeftPart
(
UriPartial.Authority) +
"/Account/Verify/" + confirmationGuid;
public class EmailManager
{
private const string EmailFrom = "noreplay@gmail.com";
public static void SendConfirmationEmail(string userName)
{
var user = Membership.GetUser(userName.ToString());
var confirmationGuid = user.ProviderUserKey.ToString();
var verifyUrl = HttpContext.Current.Request.Url.GetLeftPart
(UriPartial.Authority) + "/Account/Verify/" + confirmationGuid;
using (var client = new SmtpClient())
{
using (var message = new MailMessage(EmailFrom, user.Email))
{
message.Subject = "Please Verify your Account";
message.Body = "<html><head><meta content=\"text/html;
charset=utf-8\" /></head><body><p>Dear " + user.UserName +
", </p><p>To verify your account, please click the following link:</p>"
+ "<p><a href=\"" + verifyUrl + "\" target=\"_blank\">" + verifyUrl + "
+"</a></p><div>Best regards,</div><div>Someone</div><p>Do not forward "
+"this email. The verify link is private.</p></body></html>";
message.IsBodyHtml = true;
client.EnableSsl = true;
client.Send(message);
};
};
}
}
Step 5: Change Registration
Now, we need to change Registration functionality, the main thing is when creating a new user we need to change the user state to Not Approve and instead of performing login we need to send him an email using our EmailManager and show him the confirmation page.
[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Register(RegisterModel model)
{
if (ModelState.IsValid)
{
// Attempt to register the user
MembershipCreateStatus createStatus;
//Make sure the user is not approve at this point!!!
Membership.CreateUser(model.UserName, model.Password, model.Email,
null, null, false, null, out createStatus);
if (createStatus == MembershipCreateStatus.Success)
{
EmailManager.SendConfirmationEmail(model.UserName);
return RedirectToAction("Confirmation", "Account");
}
else
{
ModelState.AddModelError("", ErrorCodeToString(createStatus));
}
}
// If we got this far, something failed, redisplay form
return View(model);
}
Step 6: Add Verify
In the AccountController I’ve add a Verify ActionResult, the Verify will receive User ID, then we’ll check for some bad Ids, if the user is already approved SignOut the user a redirect to the LogOn page, if the user is not approve we need to change the IsApprove to true and call UpdateUser to update the database with the new change, also we will do the login for the user and redirect him to the home page.
public ActionResult Verify(string id)
{
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(id) || (!Regex.IsMatch(id, @"[0-9a-f]{8}\-
([0-9a-f]{4}\-){3}[0-9a-f]{12}")))
{
ViewBag.Msg = "Not Good!!!";
return View();
}
else
{
var user = Membership.GetUser(new Guid(id));
if (!user.IsApproved)
{
user.IsApproved = true;
Membership.UpdateUser(user);
FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie(user.UserName, false);
return RedirectToAction("Index", "Home");
}
else
{
FormsAuthentication.SignOut();
ViewBag.Msg = "Account Already Approved";
return RedirectToAction("LogOn");
}
}
}
Enjoy