Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition

20.3. Forms Authentication

In traditional ASP programming developers often had to create their own security systems. A common approach was to insert a little snippet of code at the beginning of every secure page. This code would check for the existence of a custom cookie. If the cookie didn't exist, the user would be redirected to a login page, where the cookie would be created after a successful login.

ASP.NET uses the same approach in its forms authentication model. You are still respon-sible for creating the login page (although you can use a set of specially designed controls to help you, as described in Chapter 21). However, you don't need to create the security cookie manually, or check for it in secure pages, because ASP.NET handles these ...