How can I make accessing my custom IPrincipal easier in ASP.NET MVC?

Question

I\'ve written a custom principal object which contains a few additional fields (email and userid in addition to the username).

In order to access these properties I have

Answer 1

You could either create a base class and override the "User" property using the "new" keyword or create an extension method like this:

public static class ControllerExtensions
{
    public static CustomPrincipal CustomPrincipal(this Controller controller)
    {
        if(controller.User is CustomPrincipal)
        {
            return controller.User as CustomPrincipal;
        }
        return null; // maybe return an empty object instead to get around null reference...
    }
}