SqlRoleProvider: NullReferenceException when calling Roles.GetRolesForUser

Question

Scenario: WCF Service using SqlRoleProvider for authentication with a Sql Server 2012 Database server. WCF is hosted on a IIS7 webserver.

please see this error:

System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
at System.Web.Security.Roles.GetRolesForUser(String username)

RoleManagement is enabled.

On my local development machine (server 2012, iis7) this works fine. When I log in and call the method the roles are retrieved.

On the other server (test environment) it's not working. I can login (user is authenticated with user and pass against sql server database) but when I try and retrieve the roles for that user, I get a nullreferenceexception.

How is this possible, does anyone have any leads on to where this problem might occur?

Best regards.

Answer 1

blergh

Googling with the tags Stack Overflow provided I came across this site: http://www.lhotka.net/weblog/CallingRolesGetRolesForUserInAWCFService.aspx

In short: apparently something broke between .net 3.5 and .net 4.

To solve this issue call:

string[] roles = Roles.Provider.GetRolesForUser(ServiceSecurityContext.Current.PrimaryIdentity.Name);

instead of

string[] roles = Roles.GetRolesForUser(ServiceSecurityContext.Current.PrimaryIdentity.Name);

The difference is in the .Provider which is added in the middle. After adding this it worked fine.

Answer 2

This issue sounds like this asp.net bug.

connect.microsoft.com

A workaround is to adjust your web server tracing level. For example, adding the follow settings in your web.config file would resolve the issue,

<system.webServer>
    <tracing>
     <traceFailedRequests>
        <remove path="*"/>
        <add path="*">
         <traceAreas>
            <add provider="ASP" verbosity="Verbose" />
            <!-- Note that the verbosity is set to Warning (default value is Verbose)-->
            <add provider="ASPNET" areas="Infrastructure,Module,Page,AppServices" verbosity="Warning" />
            <add provider="ISAPI Extension" verbosity="Verbose" />
            <add provider="WWW Server" areas="Authentication,Security,Filter,StaticFile,CGI,Compression,Cache,RequestNotifications,Module,Rewrite,WebSocket" verbosity="Verbose" />
         </traceAreas>
         <failureDefinitions statusCodes="200-999" />
        </add>
     </traceFailedRequests>
    </tracing>
</system.webServer>