HttpContext.User Property

Definition

Gets or sets security information for the current HTTP request.

public System.Security.Principal.IPrincipal User { get; set; }

Property Value

Security information for the current HTTP request.

Examples

The following example shows how to access properties of the current user through the User property. Those properties are used to set the title of the Web page.

If the application uses Windows authentication, the user name includes the domain. For example, the page title would be "Home page for DOMAIN\username".

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    if (User.Identity.IsAuthenticated)
    {
        Page.Title = "Home page for " + User.Identity.Name;
    }
    else
    {
        Page.Title = "Home page for guest user.";
    }
}

Remarks

The User property provides programmatic access to the properties and methods of the IPrincipal interface.

Because ASP.NET pages contain a default reference to the System.Web namespace (which contains the HttpContext class), you can reference the members of HttpContext on an .aspx page without using the fully qualified class reference to HttpContext. For example, you can use User.Identity.Name to get the name of the user on whose behalf the current process is running. However, if you want to use the members of IPrincipal from an ASP.NET code-behind module, you must include a reference to the System.Web namespace in the module and a fully qualified reference to both the currently active request/response context and the class in System.Web that you want to use. For example, in a code-behind page you must specify the fully qualified name HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.Name.

Applies to

Product Versions
.NET Framework 1.1, 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, 4.0, 4.5, 4.5.1, 4.5.2, 4.6, 4.6.1, 4.6.2, 4.7, 4.7.1, 4.7.2, 4.8, 4.8.1

See also