How do I use single login for multiple web apps

Question

I want to log in for 1 application and use the same login token to authenticate the second application. I have used the same application name so both applications use the same membership provider.....

I have 2 web applications, using asp.net 3.5, c#, hosted in IIS 7.0. I use the aspnet_membership provider for authentication/authorization

They are hosted side by side as 2 seperate applications . The question is can I log in for 1 application and be authenticated for the other by using the same log in....

Thanks in advance

Stuart

Answer 1

The technology behind Single Sign-On solutions cannot be explained in a few lines of code, it requires some reading/studying to look at the alternatives and how to implement them.

For instance you could take a look at this article about Single Sign-On using Active Directory Federation Services.

UPDATE:
Here is a blogpost about Single sign-on with Forms Authentication.

Answer 2

Its called Single Sign On - SSO and its fairly simple to do if your applications are hosted on the same domain (app1.domain.com and app2.domain.com - or - domain.com/app1 and domain.com/app2), its fairly straightforward to do so.

When you create a cookie using the Forms Authentication, set the domain as ".domain.com". Also, both the Applications would have to use the same Machine Key within web.config.

Check out http://www.codeproject.com/KB/web-security/aspnetsinglesignon.aspx and http://weblogs.asp.net/hernandl/archive/2004/06/09/ssoformsauth.aspx