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SharePoint 2010 Forms Based Authentication Configuration Manager

I found myself getting really tired of constantly modifying configuration files when setting up forms based auth (FBA) in SharePoint 2010. There's even more work now then there was in the previous release, because now we have an additional web.config file to modify - for the STS. It was also a constant hassle when you fat finger some random part of a web.config change. So, rather than continuing to complain about it, I wrote this little tool to help manage it for you. You should read through the complete HowToUseIt.txt file that's included in the zip attached to this posting, but basically it allows you to create the entries for membership provider, role provider, wildcard search and connection string and push it out to all of the servers in your farm. You can also read in the configuration settings from a web application and modify them, then push it back out to the same server, or use it as the basis of settings for a brand new server. To get you started, I also include several sample membership and role provider configuration entries. Just select the samples drop down and pick the item you want to create an entry for. Modify the entry to suite your environment, provide the Url to the web application where the configuration changes should be made, and click the Apply Config button. Under the covers it creates a custom SharePoint timer job that runs on each web front end and modifies the appropriate web.config file with the appropriate entries. The timer job is part of a solution (wsp) that's included in the attachment - make sure you deploy it to the farm first before doing anything else.

I STRONGLY encourage you to make a backup of your central admin, STS, and web application web.config files before pushing out changes in case something happens you don't like. I've tested this on quite a few web applications and in single server and multi-server farms so far without problems, but you never know.

It's already saved me a lot of time and hassle, hope it provides some value for you too.

 

UPDATE 6/15/2012: I finally reproduced the error about node belonging to a different document context, and have fixed that. A new build with that fix is attached. Thanks for those of you that reported it.

FBAConfigMgr.zip

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    thanks

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    thanks

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    July 29, 2010
    Yes this is the same issue am facing,, if you get any solution please mail me. I am with this problem from 2 days..thanks

  • Anonymous
    July 29, 2010
    It sounds very interesting to me. I agree with you form based authentication was way easier to set up in SharePoint 2007 then it is in 2010. I have to try this out and will come back to you with a feedback. Appreciate your effort for the community. Cheers! Cash

  • Anonymous
    July 30, 2010
    Thank you! This is just the sort of tool I've been looking for right now too. Best Regards, Lou

  • Anonymous
    October 12, 2010
    I am experiencing the following problem - the web.config files are modified, but only "Connection String" and "People Picker Wildcard" sections are added. The "Membership Provider" and "Role Provider" textboxes are filled, but these values appear in no web.config file. Do you have any idea what can cause such a problem?

  • Anonymous
    October 14, 2010
    Fantastic.  FBA web.config files are burning out the back of my skull cheers

  • Anonymous
    October 26, 2010
    Outstanding.... This worked perfectly in my environment with custom membership and  role providers.  Thank you so much!

  • Anonymous
    November 17, 2010
    fixed my error, mind I am sitting here thinking its 2010 and we are still manipulating great long strings even if they are xml files

  • Anonymous
    November 30, 2010
    Any chance you can release the source code? Thanks

  • Anonymous
    December 01, 2010
    I've been inspired by this and created a slightly different version which directly updates the config files and is scriptable from Powershell. It's available on CodePlex: fbaconfigmanager.codeplex.com

  • Anonymous
    February 10, 2011
    NewBie Question. Can you pls be more verbose on how to deploy the FBAConfigFeature.wsp application? When I follow the instructions verbatim powershell throws an exception saying .. "The term 'add-spsolution' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet" ... Any help??

  • Anonymous
    April 20, 2011
    I second the need for source code!! Merill, yours is great but it doesn't seem to apply the changes on every server in the farm. Looking in Reflector, this tool seems to use an SPJobDefinition to deploy the changes, does that work when you add a new server to the farm or do you have to re-deploy the Job??

  • Anonymous
    April 24, 2011
    Could you send me the source code!  Thanks very much.

  • Anonymous
    April 24, 2011
    Could you send me the source code!  Thanks very much. My Email is : Xiangwenhu@hotmail.com

  • Anonymous
    May 25, 2011
    Hi. Nice work However there is one problem for the case when a target config file does not have system.web/membership section defined - this will cause an error that will prevent the config file from being updated... That's what I have encountered and that's a pity there are no sources provided Thanks

  • Anonymous
    May 25, 2011
    Some details on the error I described above. The error occurs only for STS web.config (since only in this case system.web,providers etc nodes are pre created) and the message is The node to be inserted is from a different document context Seems it's quite easy to fix Hope it helps someone

  • Anonymous
    October 22, 2011
    <a href="j2me-aspnet.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">Its really very helpful information Thanks</a></p> <br /> <br /><br />

  • Anonymous
    August 13, 2012
    I want to configure with Oracle database. Can you provide me some clue to do that.

  • Anonymous
    February 27, 2013
    Hi Steve, great tool! One comment, though: I used the provided SQL-Membership Provider example and there is a linebreak in the template. This linebreak is written to the web.config files as '&#xD;&#xA;'. No big deal here, but you could perhaps erase this inside the template. Regard, Urs

  • Anonymous
    July 15, 2013
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 20, 2014
    Can you please share the code of this??

  • Anonymous
    July 01, 2014
    Nothing really earth shattering here – the previous version of FBA Configuration Manager for SharePoint

  • Anonymous
    July 01, 2014
    Nothing really earth shattering here – the previous version of FBA Configuration Manager for SharePoint

  • Anonymous
    July 09, 2014
    Nothing really earth shattering here – the previous version of FBA Configuration Manager for SharePoint

  • Anonymous
    July 11, 2014
    Nothing really earth shattering here – the previous version of FBA Configuration Manager for SharePoint

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  • Anonymous
    March 01, 2015
    Nothing really earth shattering here - the previous version of FBA Configuration Manager for SharePoint