How To—Use Forms Authentication with Active Directory

ASP.NET Forms authentication allows users to identify themselves by entering credentials (a user name and password) into a Web Form. Upon receipt of these credentials, the Web application can authenticate the user by checking the user name and password combination against a data source.

This How To describes how to authenticate users against the Microsoft® Active Directory® directory service by using the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP). It also describes how to retrieve a list of security groups and distribution lists that the user belongs to, to store this information in a GenericPrincipal object, and to store this into the HttpContext.Current.User property that flows with the request through the ASP.NET Web application. This can subsequently be used for .NET role-based authorization.