Configure Microsoft.AspNet.Identity to allow email address as username

Question

I\'m in the process of creating a new application and started out using EF6-rc1, Microsoft.AspNet.Identity.Core 1.0.0-rc1, Microsoft.AspNet.Identity.EntityFramework 1.0.0-rc

Answer 1

In my case, running in VS 2013 C#, MVC 5.2.2, using ASP.NET Identity 2.0, the solution was to update the ApplicationUserManager constructor inside App_Start\IdentityConfig.cs like so:

public ApplicationUserManager(IUserStore<ApplicationUser> store)
        : base(store)
    {
        this.UserValidator = new UserValidator<ApplicationUser>(this) { AllowOnlyAlphanumericUserNames = false };
    }

Answer 2

For people on AspNet.Identity.Core 2.1 and up, these validators in the UserManager are readonly. Email addresses as usernames are allowed by default but if you need further customisation of the characters in your usernames, you can do so in Startup.cs like this:

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
    services.AddIdentity<ApplicationUser, IdentityRole>(options => {
        options.User.AllowedUserNameCharacters = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789-._@+/";
    });

    // ... etc
}

(I needed a '/' for legacy reasons.)

Answer 3

Since coding my own ApplicationUserManager : UserManager class didn't work for me (maybe bc I use Razor Pages, not MVC), here's another solution: In Startup.cs in CofigureServices() you can configure Identity Options, for example:

services.Configure<IdentityOptions>(options =>
{
  options.User.AllowedUserNameCharacters = 
  "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ@";
  options.User.RequireUniqueEmail = true;
});

More on this topic in Microsoft docs: https://docs.microsoft.com/de-de/aspnet/core/security/authentication/identity-configuration?view=aspnetcore-2.2

Answer 4

I have faced the same problem . but finally I resolved the issue by adding bellow part in to my method , not the constructor .

public void MyMethod(){

     UserManager<ApplicationUser> manager = new UserManager<ApplicationUser>(new UserStore<ApplicationUser>(new ApplicationDbContext()));


                    // Configure validation logic for usernames  
                    manager.UserValidator = new UserValidator<ApplicationUser>(manager)
                    {
                        AllowOnlyAlphanumericUserNames = false,
                        RequireUniqueEmail = true

                    };         

}

Answer 5

I had the same problem, when I tried to change the code for make the UserName was the real name of the person and not the email the system show me the same error message "User name ABC DEF is invalid, can only contain letters or digits." I solved the problem adding the space character (In my case at the end) to AllowedUserNameCharacters.

Im using Asp.Net Core 2.2 and VS2017

This is my code

Go to Startup.cs and edit or add the line under "//user settings":

        services.AddDbContext<ApplicationDbContext>(options =>
            options.UseMySql(Configuration.GetConnectionString("DefaultConnection")));

        services.AddIdentity<ApplicationUser, ApplicationRole>()
            .AddEntityFrameworkStores<ApplicationDbContext>()
            .AddDefaultTokenProviders();

        services.Configure<IdentityOptions>(options =>
        {
            // Password settings.
            options.Password.RequireDigit = true;
            options.Password.RequireLowercase = true;
            options.Password.RequireNonAlphanumeric = true;
            options.Password.RequireUppercase = true;
            options.Password.RequiredLength = 6;
            options.Password.RequiredUniqueChars = 1;

            // Lockout settings.
            options.Lockout.DefaultLockoutTimeSpan = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(5);
            options.Lockout.MaxFailedAccessAttempts = 5;
            options.Lockout.AllowedForNewUsers = true;


            // User settings.
            options.User.AllowedUserNameCharacters =
                "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789-._@+ ";
            options.User.RequireUniqueEmail = false;
        });

        services.ConfigureApplicationCookie(options =>

Answer 6

I was also stuck with this because most of the time usernames are E-mails these days, I can understand the reasoning of a separate E-mail field though. These are purely my thoughts / experience as I also could not find Microsoft's say on this.

Remember, Asp Identity is purely to identify someone, you don't have to have an E-mail to be identified but they allow us to store it because it forms part of an identity. When you create a new web project in visual studio, you are given the option for authentication options.

If you select a non empty project type such as MVC and set authentication to "Individual accounts" then you are given the basic underpinnings for user management. One of which includes a sub class looking like this within App_Start\IdentityConfig.cs:

 // Configure the application user manager used in this application. UserManager is defined in ASP.NET Identity and is used by the application.
public class ApplicationUserManager : UserManager<ApplicationUser>
{
    public ApplicationUserManager(IUserStore<ApplicationUser> store)
        : base(store)
    {
    }

    public static ApplicationUserManager Create(IdentityFactoryOptions<ApplicationUserManager> options, IOwinContext context) 
    {
        var manager = new ApplicationUserManager(new UserStore<ApplicationUser>(context.Get<ApplicationDbContext>()));
        // Configure validation logic for usernames
        manager.UserValidator = new UserValidator<ApplicationUser>(manager)
        {
            AllowOnlyAlphanumericUserNames = false,
            RequireUniqueEmail = true
        };
    }
    //N.B rest of code removed
}

What this tells us is that Microsoft intend us to store more complex usernames (refer to AllowOnlyAlphaNumericUserNames = false), so really we have mixed signals.

The fact this is generated from a default web project gives us a good indication / direction from Microsoft (and a clean way) to enable us to enter E-mails for the username field. It's clean because the static create method is used within the App_Start\Startup.Auth.cs when bootstrapping the application with the Microsoft.OWIN context.

The only down side to this approach is you end up storing the E-mail twice.... Which is not good!