Where to store common action parameter data in asp.net mvc application

Question

Our web application needs one common parameter in every action method.

In our case it is the customer account id and we need to support the following scenarios

a. A group of users might have the same account id which can be derived from the user profile.

b. Customer Support team should be able explicitly supply the account id of a customer and also should be able to switch the account on any page

We are trying to not to use asp.net session to store this kind of data.

Are there any other options to store and manage this kind of common parameter data?

Answer 1

Write it out as an ecrypted value to hidden field on your master page and supply the value to every view. When the user is in a a customer role, place a change account "control" on the page that is able to retrieve and update the account data -- via AJAX, perhaps -- to change the current account id. It might be easiest to do this with a custom base controller which gets the data via the ValueProvider directly and stores it as a property on the page rather than having it be a parameter to every method.

Answer 2

Use Routing for the value. So if you need to change the id you can use another URL or post it as a parameter.

Whenever you need the value just ask the ValueProvider for it.
In case it is blank - use the one from user profile.

Of course you'd better write small method that will do just that:

// Register route like:
route.MapRoute("ProvidesAccountId", "{controller}/{id}/account{accountId}/{action}.aspx")

// Property on the base controller
protected Account CurrentAccount {
    get {
        var accountId = ValueProvider.GetValue<int?>("accountId"); // GetValue is just a helper
        if (accountId.HasValue)
            return YourRepositor.GetAccountBy(accountId.Value);
        return CurrentUser.Account;
    }
}

Not to use current user's account hit the URL: Profile/123/account/Edit.aspx
To use another account you can hit the URL: Profile/123/account-456/Edit.aspx

You get the idea.

Cheers,
Dmitriy.