The situation:

You need to access user profile properties in a custom DNN module for display or perhaps pre-filling a form.

Here’s how I handled it recently:

I created a method to retrieve the profile property of interest. I could have accessed the property directly, but I wanted to customize what came back and to guard against asking for a property that didn’t exist.

private string GetValidProfileProperty(string propertyName, out bool isValid)
{
	if (CommonBase.HasValue(uProfile.GetPropertyValue(propertyName)))
	{
		isValid = true;
		return uProfile.GetPropertyValue(propertyName);
	}
	else
	{
		isValid = false;
		return "";
	}
}

(You will note the use of CommonBase.HasValue() in there. This is a method I have in my common function library to test if a value exists and guards against NullReferenceException. You can find it here.)

So in my module’s view control code-behind, I have this code:

using DotNetNuke.Entities.Users;

public partial class EditProfile : PortalModuleChild, IActionable
{
	UserInfo user;
	UserProfile uProfile;

	protected void Page_Init(object sender, EventArgs e)
	{
		user = UserController.GetCurrentUserInfo();
		uProfile = user.Profile;
	}

	protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
	{
		bool IsValid = true;
		string pval = GetValidProfileProperty("Company", out IsValid));
		if (!IsValid)
		{
			// Do something here if there is no valid data for this property
		}
		else
		{
			// Do something here with the property value, such as fill a textbox
			tbCompanyName.Text = pval;
		}
	}
}

But what if you need to save/update a profile property? Add some code like this to your submit button’s OnClick event:

protected void btnSubmit_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
	try
	{
		uProfile.SetProfileProperty("Company", tbCompanyName.Text);
		user.Profile = uProfile;

		UserController.UpdateUser(user.PortalID, user);
	}
	catch (Exception)
	{
		// Add exception handling code here
	}

}