I'm sure many of you are wondering why the infrequent posts on this blog.  It's all for a good reason: I've been working on a set of forms authentication Features.  Because, what's the point of a blog if we can't get feedback, right?  Of course this has all had to take a back seat to other projects in the works here, at the Fin.

 

I didn't do it all on my own, I had a great start by modifying a project on CodePlex created by Stacy Draper, the Forms Based Authentication Tools and Utils for SharePoint.  Not only was it a good, clean start but presents a good example of how to design SharePoint-styled forms that exist in the /_layouts directory.

 

The plan was to move a lot of the exisiting, inline code into class files, create forms for users to create their own account, and lock down the admin forms a bit.  I know, I know: I don't have to put code in an assembly for SharePoint.  Call me crazy - I just feel so naked leaving it visible to others.

 

The real problem is when I try to use a custom class for serializing user info to Xml.  It seems that .NET doesn't like the way I'm either A) Setting up my Web.config file B) serializing class containing user data or C) SharePoint just hates me.

 

In the Web.config file, I've added the inherits attribute to the <profile /> node and set the value to the fully qualified class name of my user data class.

 

I've tried a few different ways of indicating how SharePoint should handle serializing the attributes in the class but, so far, my efforts are to no avail.

 

I'll keep everyone posted and throw the finished solution up here when it's ready.