CODEWITHSUNDEEP
asp.netvb.netsession
Jason Berkan
Jason Berkan

Reputation: 8884

Provide strongly typed access to the session object

What is the best way to provide strongly typed access to the session object? I am planning on turning on Option Strict, which is causing the compiler to complain about my lazy programming technique of directly accessing the session object:

Dim blah As Integer = Session("Blah")

My initial thought is to create a class that wraps the session and provides strongly typed properties for the information stored in the session. However, I cannot decide if the class should be a singleton, or instantiated on every use, or where the code should reside (i.e. within the web project or within a class library).

I'm leaning towards a singleton in my class library, but I don't know if that is the best solution, or if I am missing any other possibilities.

Proposed Solution:

Public Class SessionAccess
    Public Shared Property Blah(ByVal session As HttpSessionState) As Integer
        Get
            Return Convert.ToInt32(session("Blah"))
        End Get
        Set(ByVal value As Integer)
            session("Blah") = value
        End Set
    End Property
End Class

Code Behind:

Dim blah As Integer = SessionAccess.Blah(session)

Upvotes: 3

Views: 611

Answers (2)

Jason Berkan
Jason Berkan

Reputation: 8884

Either my proposal is the "standard" way to do it, or else no one wraps their session access, since this question hasn't received very many answers.

I did find one line in this answer that mentioned creating a SessionManager:

  • Wrap the ASP.NET Session with a SessionManager to avoid development mistakes in spelling, etc. when referencing items from Session.

I have not thought of any reason to not use a singleton class to provide typed access to the session, so that is the solution I went with in the project.

Upvotes: 1

David
David

Reputation: 73564

I deleted my original answer as @Jason Berkan made a very good point when he questioned my answer. Jason, I think this idea is fine.

The only thing I would change in your code example is to check to ensure that the session variable exists.

Upvotes: 1

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