ASP.Net UserName to Email

Question

I am working with the new ASP.NET Identity (RTM) and I was wondering how would I go on about changing registering and login from being a UserName to an Email.

The id

Answer 1

If you really want to use e-mail address to log in, then, IMHO, the "hack" you suggested is the best approach. Because, if you insist on "doing it properly" you'll have to at least

• modify the database schema, obviously
• ensure username uniqueness yourself (you could make a database constraint/index do this for you, but you'll have to find a good way to deal with errors and reporting them to the user)
• find a good substitute for just writing "User.Identity.UserName" in you code
• probably even more

On the other hand, if you decide to "hack" the UserName field you need to

• modify RegisterViewModel validation (add [EmailAddress] to the UserName property), probably slightly customize [Display(Name=...)] etc.

• make sure UserManager.UserValidator instance used in your AccountController allows special characters used in e-mail addresses. To do this, make sure its nondefault constructor looks like this:

  public AccountController(UserManager userManager)
  {
      UserManager = userManager;
      var userValidator = UserManager.UserValidator as UserValidator;
      userValidator.AllowOnlyAlphanumericUserNames = false;
  }
  

I hope this could help you weigh the pros and cons of both approaches and come up with the best solution. Good luck!