SimpleMembershipProvider MinRequiredPasswordLength always returns 0 despite it being defined as 6 in Web.config membership provider section

Question

I switched to SimpleMembershipProvider in an ASP.NET MVC 4 app. Everything else is working great but there's this problem...

When I try this code:

var password = Membership.GeneratePassword(Membership.MinRequiredPasswordLength, 0);

MinRequiredPasswordLength is always 0. The settings defined in the membership provider's Web.config section are not being read.

Here's the Membership default provider Web.config section:

<membership defaultProvider="AspNetSqlMembershipProvider">
    <providers>
         <clear />
             <add name="AspNetSqlMembershipProvider"
                  type="System.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProvider"
                  connectionStringName="DefaultConnection"
                  enablePasswordRetrieval="false"
                  enablePasswordReset="true"
                  requiresQuestionAndAnswer="false"
                  requiresUniqueEmail="false"
                  maxInvalidPasswordAttempts="5"
                  minRequiredPasswordLength="6"
                  minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters="0"
                  passwordAttemptWindow="10"
                  applicationName="/Acad" />
    </providers>
</membership>

Here's the debug info I get:

Any hints?

Is the SimpleMembershipProvider so simple that it doesn't even use the Web.config section?

Solution for the moment

To overcome the SimpleMembershipProvider current limitation, I used this code to grab the value defined in Web.config:

MembershipSection membershipSection = (MembershipSection)WebConfigurationManager.GetSection("system.web/membership");
var defaultProvider = membershipSection.DefaultProvider;
ProviderSettings providerSettings = membershipSection.Providers[defaultProvider];
var minRequiredPasswordLength = int.Parse(providerSettings.Parameters["minRequiredPasswordLength"]);

Answer 1

I switched to SimpleMembershipProvider in an ASP.NET MVC 4 app.

Erm, from the relevant section you have shown in your web.config this doesn't seem to be the case at all. You are sill using the AspNetSqlMembershipProvider.

If you want to switch to the SimpleMembershipProvider make sure that you have properly configured it:

<membership defaultProvider="SimpleMembershipProvider">
  <providers>
    <clear/>
    <add name="SimpleMembershipProvider"
         type="WebMatrix.WebData.SimpleMembershipProvider, WebMatrix.WebData"
    />
  </providers>
</membership>

This being said the SimpleMembershipProvider doesn't support setting those properties via web.config. It doesn't even use it. If you want such functionality you will have to implement it yourself.