ASP .NET Custom RoleProvider not respecting cacheRolesInCookie="true"

I was having the same problem. In my case the issue was that I was setting Context.User to GenericPrincipal and not RolePrincipal. So instead of:

this.Context.User = new GenericPrincipal(customIdentity, roles);

this fixed for me:

            HttpCookie roleCookie = this.Context.Request.Cookies[Roles.CookieName];
            if (IsValidAuthCookie(roleCookie))
            {
                this.Context.User = new RolePrincipal(customIdentity, roleCookie.Value);
            }
            else
            {
                this.Context.User = new RolePrincipal(customIdentity);
                var x = this.Context.User.IsInRole("Visitor"); // do this to cache the results in the cookie
            }

The IsValidAuthCookie method checks for null and empty:

    private static bool IsValidAuthCookie(HttpCookie authCookie)
    {
        return authCookie != null && !String.IsNullOrEmpty(authCookie.Value);
    }

UPDATE: After upgrading to MVC5 .NET 4.5 roleManager stopped working (not saving roles in cookie) so had to save it myself:

        HttpCookie roleCookie = filterContext.HttpContext.Request.Cookies[Roles.CookieName];
        if (IsValidAuthCookie(roleCookie))
        {
            filterContext.Principal = new RolePrincipal(customIdentity, roleCookie.Value);
            RolePrincipal rp = (RolePrincipal)filterContext.Principal;
            if (!rp.IsRoleListCached) // check if roles loaded properly (if loads old cookie from another user for example, roles won't be loaded/cached).
            {
                // roles not loaded. Delete and save new
                Roles.DeleteCookie();
                rp.IsInRole("Visitor"); // load Roles
                SaveRoleCookie(rp, filterContext);
            }

        }
        else
        {
            filterContext.Principal = new RolePrincipal(customIdentity);
            filterContext.Principal.IsInRole("Visitor"); // do this to cache the results in the cookie.
            SaveRoleCookie(filterContext.Principal as RolePrincipal, filterContext);
        }

Save the roleCookie

    private void SaveRoleCookie(RolePrincipal rp, AuthenticationContext filterContext)
    {
        string s = rp.ToEncryptedTicket();
        const int MAX_COOKIE_LENGTH = 4096;
        if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(s) || s.Length > MAX_COOKIE_LENGTH)
        {
            Roles.DeleteCookie();
        }
        else
        {
            HttpCookie cookie = new HttpCookie(Roles.CookieName, s);
            cookie.HttpOnly = true;
            cookie.Path = Roles.CookiePath;
            cookie.Domain = Roles.Domain;
            if (Roles.CreatePersistentCookie)
                cookie.Expires = rp.ExpireDate;
            cookie.Secure = Roles.CookieRequireSSL;
            filterContext.HttpContext.Response.Cookies.Add(cookie);
        }
    }

Place this code on AuthenticationFilter and register it globally. See here.

https://web.archive.org/web/20101123220352/http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/104688/rolemanager-cacherolesincookie-option-does-not-work

"The issue of when to cache (or not cache) in RolePrincipal went through a number of design iterations, and we finally settled on only caching for the method exposed by the IPrincipal interface (i.e. IsInRole). "