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User details within the DbContext model builder

I'm new to razor pages / efcore / aspnet identity and have been trying to figure this out but its beating me.
Basically, I use AspNet Identity for user authentication & authorisation. I've extended AspNetUsers with an additional OrganisationId, which is an FK to Organisation entity; and added the ID as a claim in the identity claim store. This works fine.
Now I need to set an efcore global filter based on the authenticated user's organisationId so they can only view data that is assigned to their organisation.
However, I can't access the authenticated user details within the ModelBuilder.
public class SDMOxContext : IdentityDbContext<
ApplicationUser, ApplicationRole, string,
ApplicationUserClaim, ApplicationUserRole, ApplicationUserLogin,
ApplicationRoleClaim, ApplicationUserToken>
{
public SDMOxContext(DbContextOptions<SDMOxContext> options)
: base(options)
{ }
protected override void OnModelCreating(ModelBuilder builder)
{
base.OnModelCreating(builder);
// Set global filter so users can only see projects within their organisation.
builder.Entity<Project>().HasQueryFilter(project => project.OrganisationId == 1);
}
Instead of 1 in the global filter, I need to enter the user organisationid, which is stored as a user claim. Usually I get it with this:
User.FindFirstValue("OrganisationId")
However, User doesn't exist in the current context.

So I would need to apply the query filter at a later stage, ie. after user authentication? Any pointers where to start with a mid-tier/logic-tier approach?
Granted this is an opinion on architecture, but I break it down like this:
Data-Tier - This tier's responsibility to to access resources (normally) outside the executing application. This includes; Databases, File IO, Web Api's etc.
Business/Logic-Tier - This tier's responsibility (which could be broken down further) should Authenticate, Authorize, Validate and build objects that represent the businesses needs. To build these objects, it may consume one or more data access objects (for example, it may use an IO DA to retrieve the Image from a local file system or Azure storage and a Database DA to retrieve metadata about that image).
Presentation/Exposure-Tier - This tier's responsibility is to wrap and transform the object into the consumers need (winforms, wpf, html, json, xml, binary serialization etc).
By leaving logic out of the data-tier (even in multi-tenant systems) you gain the ability to access data across all systems (and trust me there is a lot of money to be made here).
This is probably way more than I can explain in such a short place and very my opinion. I'm going to be leaving out quite a bit but here goes.
Data-Tier
namespace ProjectsData
{
public interface IProjectDA
{
IProjectDO GetProject(Guid projectId, Guid organizationId);
}
private class ProjectDA : DbContext, IProjectDA
{
public ProjectDA (...)
public IEnumerable<ProjectDO> Projects { get; set; }
protected override void OnModelCreating(ModelBuilder builder) {... }
public IProjectDO GetProject(Guid projectId, Guid organizationId)
{
var result = Projects
.FirstOrDefault(p => p.Id == projectId && OrganizationId = organizationId);
return result;
}
}
public interface IProjectDO{ ... }
private class ProjectDO: IProjectDO
{
public Guid Id { get; set; }
public Guid OrganizationId { get; set; }
public Guid CategoryId { get; set; }
}
}
Logic
namespace ProjectBusiness
{
public interface IProjectBO { .. }
public interface IOrganization
{
Guid OrganizationId { get; }
}
private class ProjectBA : IProjectBO
{
private readonly IProjectDA _projectDA;
private readonly IIdentity _identity;
private readonly IOrganization _organization;
public ProjectLogic(IProjectDA projectDA,
IIdentity identity,
IOrganizationContext organizationContext)
{
_projectDA = projectDA;
_identity = identity;
}
public IProjectBO GetProject(Guid id)
{
var do = _projectDA
.GetProject(id, _organization);
var result = map.To<ProjectBO>(do);
return result;
}
}
public interface IProjectBO { .. }
private class ProjectBO
{
public Guid Id { get; set; }
public Guid OrganizationId { get; set; }
public Guid CategoryId { get; set; }
}
}
So under these circumstances the data layer is aware of type of request, but isn't multi-tenant aware. It isn't limiting all request based on anything. This architecture is advantageous in a number of ways.
First, in the above example, your product takes off and your supervisor wants to know what Categories are the most popular.
namespace StatisticsBusiness
{
public interface IStatisticsBO
{
IEnumerable<ICategoryStatisticBO> CategoryStatistics { get; set; }
}
public interface ICategoryStaticBO
{
Guid CategoryId { get; }
int ProjectCount { get; }
}
private class StatisticsBA : IStatisticsBO
{
private readonly IProjectDA _projectDA;
private readonly IIdentity _identity;
public ProjectLogic(IProjectDA projectDA,
IIdentity identity)
{
_projectDA = projectDA;
_identity = identity;
}
public IEnumerable<IProjectBO GetOrderedCategoryPopularity()
{
var dos = _projectDA
.GetProjectCategoryCounts()
var result = map.To<IEnumerable<IStatisticsBO>>(dos);
return result;
}
}
public interface IStatisticsBO{ .. }
private class StatisticsBO
{
public Guid CategoryId { get; }
public int ProjectCount { get; }
}
}
Note: Some people prefer to pass an expression as a predicate. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. If you decide to go the predicate route, then you'll have to decide if all your Data Access types use predicates or not. Just realize that using predicates against IO or Web Api might be more effort that it's worth.
Secondly, some requirement causes you not to be able to use Entity Framework. You replace it with Dapper or some other new better technology/framework. All you have to create new I<whataver>DA classes because the consuming logic is unaware of anything other than those interfaces (programming against an interface, the L in SOLID programming principles and the I in SOLID programming principles).
I don't use this pattern all the time because for some smaller websites, it's too much work for the payoff.

I will suggest to decompose the solution in tow parts
Add an organization id in your dbcontext, much like a tenant id in multi-tenant env. See this link for example.
Next challenge will be to pass the organization id as a parameter to DbContext constructor. For this you can create a factory for DbContext. Since you store the OrganizationId in claims. The factory can access the same claim HttpContext and pass the organization id as a parameter while instanting the dbContext.
It's not perfect but can give you a starting point.

How do I query identity data efficiently in ASP.Net Core?

Background
I have a website written in ASP.NET Core v2.1.1.
I have a custom identity user class:
public class FooIdentityUser : IdentityUser<string>, IIdentityModel
{
[MaxLength(50)]
public string FirstName { get; set; }
[MaxLength(50)]
public string LastName { get; set; }
public string FullName => $"{FirstName} {LastName}";
public bool FooBool { get; set; }
}
and a custom identity role class:
public class FooIdentityRole : IdentityRole<string>
{
}
Which I then reference in the dbcontext:
public class FooIdentityDbContext : IdentityDbContext<FooIdentityUser,FooIdentityRole,string>
{
public FooIdentityDbContext(DbContextOptions<FooIdentityDbContext> options)
: base(options)
{
}
}
Requirement
My overall requirement is that I want to give system admin users the ability to view and eventually manage user data from within the admin area of the website.
Specifically:
I want to provide a list of users that are in a foo role
And / or I want to list all users that have FooBool set to true
And / or I want to query on email address, first name & last name
And / or carry out a sort
Question
Does anyone have any links to web pages where this has been done before or can you respond on how I can implement this feature? I have attempted a couple of approaches below.
Approaches / Research
From what I can see there are two approaches to doing this:
Approach 1
Because I want to list users specifically for a user role based in a view, I can see that user manager provides a method for this:
_userManager.GetUsersInRoleAsync(fooRoleName)
The issue I have with this is it returns an IList so whilst it will return all users with this role, if I want to query on FooBool and / or FirstName, LastName or Email Address, it will need to cycle through the list to filter these out which would be inefficient if there are 10s of thousands or 100s of thousands of users?
Ideally, this would return an IQueryable so it wouldn't hit the database until my where and order by had been applied but I can't find a way of doing this?
Approach 2
The other way may be to query the context directly through my generic repository.
public class GenericIdentityRepository<TModel> : IIdentityRepository<TModel> where TModel : class, IIdentityModel
{
private readonly ILogger _logger;
public FooIdentityDbContext Context { get; set; }
private readonly DbSet<TModel> _dbSet;
public GenericIdentityRepository(FooIdentityDbContext dbContext, ILogger<GenericIdentityRepository<TModel>> logger)
{
Context = dbContext;
_logger = logger;
_dbSet = Context.Set<TModel>();
}
public IQueryable<TModel> GetAll()
{
_logger.LogDebug("GetAll " + typeof(TModel));
IQueryable<TModel> query = _dbSet;
return query;
}
public IQueryable<TModel> GetAllNoTracking()
{
_logger.LogDebug("GetAllNotTracking " + typeof(TModel));
IQueryable<TModel> query = GetAll().AsNoTracking();
return query;
}
}
I was looking to see if I could do something by creating custom classes for userrole and then using linq to give me an IQueryable?
public class FooIdentityUserRole : IdentityUserRole<string>
{
public virtual FooIdentityUser User { get; set; }
public virtual FooIdentityRole Role { get; set; }
}
And then somehow query the data to return an IQueryable but I'm struggling to produce the correct linq I need to do this.

My suggestion is to use the FooIdentityDbContext directly in your controllers and just query the data in the way you want. I don't know a way you could achieve what you want using the UserManager class. Maybe there is but honestly, I wouldn't mix things. UserManager is more useful when you are dealing with a single user and want to do things with it such as AddToRoleAsync or ChangePasswordAsync.
You have much more flexibility using the DbContextclass directly. You don't need some fancy generic repository. Keep it simple and concise unless you definitely need the abstraction (which almost always you don't)
Down to the actual answer: You've already configured the entities correctly, so now just inject the FooIdentityDbContext and start querying. Something like this:
public class HomeController : Controller
{
private readonly FooIdentityDbContext_dbContext;
public HomeController(FooIdentityDbContext dbContext)
{
_dbContext = dbContext ?? throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(dbContext));
}
public async Task<IActionResult> UserList(string roleName, bool fooBool, string firstName)
{
// You are interested in Users on Roles, so it's easier to start on the UserRoles table
var usersInRole = _dbContext.UserRoles.Select(userRole => userRole);
// filter only users on role first
if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(roleName))
{
usersInRole = usersInRole.Where(ur => ur.Role.Name == roleName);
}
// then filter by fooBool
usersInRole = usersInRole.Where(ur => ur.User.FooBool == fooBool);
// then filter by user firstname or whatever field you need
if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(firstName))
{
usersInRole = usersInRole.Where(ur => ur.User.FirstName.StartsWith(firstName));
}
// finally materialize the query, sorting by FirstName ascending
// It's a common good practice to not return your entities and select only what's necessary for the view.
var filteredUsers = await usersInRole.Select(ur => new UserListViewModel
{
Id = ur.UserId,
Email = ur.User.Email,
FooBool = ur.User.FooBool,
FirstName = ur.User.FirstName
}).OrderBy(u => u.FirstName).ToListAsync();
return View("UserListNew", filteredUsers);
}
}
Bonus: I've been reading the EF Core in Action book by Jon Smith and it's great. I highly recommend reading it if you want to keep using EF Core in your projects. It's full of nice tips and real world examples.

use .Users.
await _userManager.Users.Where(w => w.LastChangeUserId == null).ToListAsync();

asp.net mvc better way of getting relational data

I am building an asp.net mvc site that allows users (with the role of manager) to add/manage other users
To do this I've added a relational table called ManagerUsers to the database that contains a manager id and a user id. When a manager invites a user, the data is stored in the ManagerUsers table.
When a manger views the users I am doing the following:
using (var context = new ApplicationDbContext())
{
Guid myId = Guid.Parse(User.Identity.GetUserId());
var userIds = context.ManagersUsers.Where(u => u.ManagerId == myId).Select(u => u.UserId.ToString()).ToList();
var userProfiles = context.Users.Where(t => userIds.Contains(t.Id)).ToList();
return View(userProfiles);
}
This works ok but seems kind of slow and long-winded. Does anyone know a better way of doing it?
EDIT: based on some replies I think I need to clarify what I'm asking. What I want to know is whether there is a better way to get a list of users that are under my management than getting a list of users Ids from the ManagerUsers table and then finding them from all of the users in the Users table? Maybe there is a better way of storing this data to make it faster for retrieval?

This tutorial shows examples of defining relationships with Entity Framework and the virtual property:
https://www.asp.net/mvc/overview/getting-started/getting-started-with-ef-using-mvc/creating-an-entity-framework-data-model-for-an-asp-net-mvc-application
It would look something like this:
public virtual <ApplicationUser> User { get; set; }
This will actually create a table relating the two models. From here you should be able to get the Users using ManagerUser.Users or something to this effect. I would also follow mason's example and implement a Repository pattern.

You shouldn't tightly couple your data access code to your MVC layer. That makes it difficult to change data layers, and it makes it difficult to test MVC without hitting a real database. You're far better off creating a separate layer that allows them to be loosely coupled.
interface IMembershipService
{
List<UserProfile> GetUsersForManager(Guid managerId);
}
class SqlServerMembershipService : IMembershipService
{
private readonly string ConnectionString;
public SqlServerMembershipService(string connectionString)
{
//Any initialization of the repository goes here
ConnectionString = connectionString;
}
public List<UserProfile> GetUsersForManager(Guid managerId)
{
using (var context = new ApplicationDbContext(connectionString))
{
var userIds = context.ManagersUsers.Where(u => u.ManagerId == myId).Select(u => u.UserId.ToString()).ToList();
var userProfiles = context.Users.Where(t => userIds.Contains(t.Id)).ToList();
return View(userProfiles);
}
}
}
Your MVC controller looks like this:
class UsersController
{
private readonly IMembershipService MembershipService;
public UsersController(IMembershipService membershipService)
{
MembershipService = membershipService;
}
public ActionResult Index()
{
Guid myId = Guid.Parse(User.Identity.GetUserId());
var profiles = MembershipService.GetUsersForManager(myId);
return View(profiles);
}
}
See how UsersController now has no idea about SqlServerMembershipService? All it knows is that it's going to receive some class via its constructor that will handle retrieving data for it. How it gets that class it up to you. You could tightly couple it by saying IMembershipService MembershipService = new SqlServerMembershipService but it's better to use Dependency Injection to do that for you.

Just in case anyone cares, here is what I did in the end:
public class ApplicationManager : ApplicationUser
{
public virtual List<ApplicationUser> Users { get; set; }
public ApplicationManager()
{
Users = new List<ApplicationUser>();
}
}
public class ApplicationUser : IdentityUser
{
public virtual ApplicationManager Manager { get; set; }
...
}
This adds two fields to the AspNetUsers table - Manager_Id and Discriminator (which states whether the user is an ApplcationManager or ApplicationUser).

ASPNET Identity user return the old record when get user by id

I had a problem when using identity user. After call the Update(user), the record in database has been changed. The problem occur when I call Method(string userId) again, contain FindById(userId). The FindById(userId) returns a user with all record still remain as the first although I has updated it before.
I implement user table:
public class ApplicationUser : IdentityUser
{
public int MyProperty { set; get; }
}
The user manager class:
public class ApplicationUserManager : UserManager<ApplicationUser>, IApplicationUserManager
{
public Task MethodAsync(string userId)
{
// Find user
// return object before change (MyProperty not equal 1)
ApplicationUser user = await base.FindByIdAsync(userId);
user.MyProperty = 1;
await base.UpdateAsync()
}
}

Does it happen only when you are updating the current logged-in user's properties? If so, try to re-sign in again:
SignInManager.SignIn(user, false, false)
The user object can be gotten from the UserManager.FindById method.

static DBContext returning incorrect values

I have a situation where a helper class with a static DBContext member is populating models' boolean fields with different values than a non-static DBContext variable does. The latter is getting the correct variables.
In this case, I have a user with specified username in the database where "isAdmin" is set to true. The static member is returning a User object with isAdmin = false, the other is returning it with true as expected. See below.
Anyone know why this would happen?
Here is the model:
public class User
{
[Required]
public int UserID { get; set; }
[Required]
public string username { get; set; }
[Required]
public bool isAdmin { get; set; }
}
And the problematic helper class looks like this:
public static class UserAuthHelper
{
private static SSBPDContext db = new SSBPDContext();
public static User getUser(string username, string plaintextPassword)
{
var users = db.Users.Where(u => u.username.Equals(username));
User user = (from u in db.Users
where u.username.Equals(username)
select u).FirstOrDefault();
//this user has isAdmin = false
User otherUser;
using (var db2 = new SSBPDContext())
{
otherUser = (from u in db2.Users
where u.username.Equals(username)
select u).FirstOrDefault();
//otherUser has isAdmin = true
}
}
}

Your context should not be static. Create one per request. Dependency injection can help you with this (that's a separate question/answer)
The context is not thread safe so it's not even worth trying to figure out the issue here.

It happens because a DBContext caches the entities you request, so the next time you ask the same DBContext for the same entity it will just get it from memory, and not query the database again for it. As such, every change to that entity outside of that DBContext will be ignored.