Session.Item("Hello") vs Session("Hello")

Question

Are there any advantages of using one over the other besides readability?

Answer 1

Nope, they do the same thing. Session["item"] is the same as Session.Item["item"].

Answer 2

You will be accessing the same collection with either.

Its just a hang over from classic ASP, where the session object is implement as a COM object. COM could nominate one property as the default property (which typically would take an indexing parameter). In the case of Session the Item property is the default property.

In an effort to allow classic ASPers to port code to .NET the Session, Server, Request, Response and Application classes were crafted to be similar between classic and .NET ASP.

Answer 3

Personally, I think referencing a property explicitly (Session.Item("Hello")) is always more readable than relying on that property's being the default (Session("Item")), but the readability is at the expense of more typing. If typing is a problem for you, switch to Ruby-on-Rails.