Set Anonymous Access

If you’re trying to configure a site for anonymous access via stsadm you can get most of the way using the out of the box extendvs (or my createwebapp) and authentication commands. The problem is that this only enables the web application for anonymous access but it doesn’t “turn it on” at the site collection or web level. To complete the process I created a new command: gl-setanonymousaccess. There are three levels that you can set: Entire Web, Lists and Libraries, and Nothing. If you set the access to Entire Web anonymous users will be able to view all pages in your site and view all lists and items which inherit permissions from the site. If you select Lists and Libraries anonymous users will be able to view and change items only for those lists and libraries that have enabled permissions for anonymous users. And of course, if you set the access to Nothing anonymous users will have no access. To make this change programmatically is really simple – it’s just a matter of setting a single property on the web site of interest. I also added some additional code to enable breaking of the permissions inheritance if necessary:

 1  public override int Run(string command, StringDictionary keyValues, out string output)
 2    {
 3        output = string.Empty;
 4     
 5        InitParameters(keyValues);
 6     
 7        string url = Params["url"].Value.TrimEnd('/');
 8        WebAnonymousState state = (WebAnonymousState)Enum.Parse(typeof (WebAnonymousState), Params["anonstate"].Value, true);
 9     
10       using (SPSite site = new SPSite(url))
11       using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb(Utilities.GetServerRelUrlFromFullUrl(url)))
12       {
13           if (!web.HasUniqueRoleAssignments && Params["enableuniquepermissions"].UserTypedIn)
14           {
15               web.BreakRoleInheritance(true);
16               web.Update();
17           }
18    
19           if (state == WebAnonymousState.EntireWeb)
20               web.AnonymousState = SPWeb.WebAnonymousState.On;
21           else if (state == WebAnonymousState.ListsAndLibraries)
22               web.AnonymousState = SPWeb.WebAnonymousState.Enabled;
23           else
24               web.AnonymousState = SPWeb.WebAnonymousState.Disabled;
25    
26           web.Update();
27       }
28    
29       return 1;
30   }

The syntax of the command can be seen below:

C:\>stsadm -help gl-setanonymousaccess

stsadm -o gl-setanonymousaccess

Sets the anonymous access settings for a given site collection.

Parameters:
        -url <url containing the content types>
        -anonstate <entireweb | listsandlibraries | none>
        [-enableuniquepermissions (breaks permissions inheritance for the web if not already broken)]

Here’s an example of how to enable anonymous access for the entire web:

  stsadm -o gl-setanonymousaccess -url "http://intranet" -anonstate entireweb