ASP.NET —

Conclusion: Session State and Wizard Control

If anything distinguishes Web-based programming from other types of programming, it's probably the issue of tracking the state of any particular user. Because Web development inherently involves distributing state and managing that state, it needs to be done deliberately.

Session state is one of the most important pieces of state in any application because it is associated with the particular client making the request. This is most important for applications where you want to have the state associated with a single user available (as in the case of a shopping cart).

Session state is always available through the Page (and through the HttpContext) via the Session object. It's a name value dictionary that holds any kind of CLR object. Adding and retrieving information is accomplished most easily via indexers. In addition, session state may be configured in its location, in how it's tracked, and in how long it lasts. ASP.NET supports a number of other more advanced settings, too.

In this tutorial, we also looked at the Wizard control as a way to retain information between several posts without resorting to session state. This is most useful when several kinds of related data need to be collected at once.

Tutorial 13 Quick Reference

How to access the current client's session state

  1. Use the Page.Session property

  2. Use the current context's HttpContext.Session property


How to access a specific value in the current client's session state

Session state is a set of key-value pairs. Access the data with the string key originally used to insert the data in the cache


How to store session state in-proc

Set the <SessionState> attributes in Web.Config. Set mode to InProc


How to store session state in a state server

Set the <SessionState> attributes in Web.Config. Set mode to StateServer. Be sure to include a stateConnection string


How to store session state in SQL Server

Set the <SessionState> attributes in Web.Config. Set mode to SQLServer. Be sure to include a sqlConnection string


How to disable session state

Set the <SessionState> attributes in Web.Config. Set mode to Off


How to use cookies to track session state

Set the <SessionState> attributes in Web.Config. Set cookieless to false


How to use URL to track session state

Set the <SessionState> attributes in Web.Config. Set cookieless to true


How to set session state timeout

Set the <SessionState> attributes in Web.Config. Set timeout to a value (representing minutes)