Principal lost in Asp.Net MVC 5 during async call

[ajohnstone-ks]

I'm updating our Asp.Net MVC 5 app on .Net framework 4.7.2 from Csla 4.11.2 to Csla 5.3.0.

We have an async action method on our controller, which basically just does an async Fetch (DataPortal.FetchAsync) and then SaveAsync.

I had forgotten to re-add Csla.AspNet.Mvc5, and after awaiting the Fetch method the principal was gone. It's a custom principal/identity, but this is not .Net core so I'm assuming that should still work (we will migrate to ClaimsPrincipal/Identity once we are done with the Csla 5 update).

I added Csla.AspNet.Mvc5 but now instead the principal is lost as soon as the DataPortal_Fetch method is entered (so, even earlier than it was previously).

I'm not sure where to look, since it was working earlier and the fix for this was back ported to 4.10 I believe. Any ideas?

[rockfordlhotka]

It is possible that the way the IContextManager is initialized has changed, or that a different provider is being used. Probably not on purpose, but a possible bug.

The thing to check is what is the type of Csla.ApplicationContext.ContextManager after you've done the AddCsla and UseCsla configuration calls in Startup.cs. Once I know what type is being used we can try and troubleshoot what's happening.

[rockfordlhotka]

Thank you, this at least gives us a good basis to figure out what's happening. This sounds familiar to me - an issue I believe I had to figure out with aspnetcore. I should have some time to look into this later today after a bunch of meetings (so I'll be happy to look at code!!).

[ajohnstone-ks]

@rockfordlhotka Much appreciated Rocky! As it happens I just pushed up a small sample app that repos the issue!

https://github.com/ajohnstone-ks/MvcPrincipalLost

[ajohnstone-ks]

Also, not sure if this is meaningful or not, but attempting to Csla.ApplicationContext.ContextManager = new Csla.Web.ApplicationContextManager() in the Application_Start of global.asax.cs will cause a StackOverflowException.

[rockfordlhotka]

I think @kellyethridge ran into this (or something similar) and the solution was that we added a CslaFlowSynchronizationContext setting value. Try setting that to true in your config file and see if that changes the behavior.

[ajohnstone-ks]

@rockfordlhotka Setting that value in the web.config resolves that issue! Thanks for your help!