ASP.NET; Several session variables or a "container object"?

Question

I have several variables that I need to send from page to page... What is the best way to do this?

Just send them one by one:

string var1 = Session["var1"] == null ? "" : Session["var1"].ToString();
int var2 = Session["var2"] == null ? 0 : int.Parse(Session["var2"].ToString());

and so on...

Or put them all in some kind of container-object?

struct SessionData
{
    public int Var1 { get; set; }
    public string Var2 { get; set; }
    public int Var3 { get; set; }
}

--

SessionData data = Session["data"] as SessionData;

What is the best solution? What do you use?

Answer 1

A hybrid of the two is the most maintainable approach. The Session offers a low-impedance, flexible key-value pair store so it would be wasteful not to take advantage of that. However, for complex pieces of data that are always related to each other - for example, a UserProfile - it makes sense to have a deeply nested object.

Answer 2

I don't think I've every created an object just to bundle other objects for storage in a session, so I'd probably go with the first option. That said, if you have such a large number of objects that you need to bundle them up to make it easier to work with, you might want to re-examine your architecture.

Answer 3

If all the data that you're storing in the Session is related, then I would suggest consolodating it into a single object like your second example:

public class UserData
{
    public string UserName { get; set; }
    public string LastPageViewed { get; set; }
    public int ParentGroupId { get; set; }
}

And then load everything once and store it for the Session.

However, I would not suggest bundling unrelated Session data into a single object. I would break each seperate group of related items into their own. The result would be something of a middleground between the two hardline approaches you provided.

Answer 4

I've used both. In general, many session variable names leads to a possibility of collisions, which makes collections a litte more reliable. Make sure the collection content relates to a single responsibility, just as you would for any object. (In fact, business objects make excellent candidates for session objects.)

Two tips:

Define all session names as public static readonly variables, and make it a coding standard to use only these static variables when naming session data.

Second, make sure that every object is marked with the [Serializable] attribute. If you ever need to save session state out-of-process, this is essential.

Answer 5

I use a SessionHandler, which is a custom rolled class that looks like this

public static class SessionHandler
{
    public static string UserId
    {
        get
        {
            return Session["UserId"];
        }
        set
        {
            Session["UserId"] = value;
        }
    }    
}

And then in code I do

var user = myDataContext.Users.Where(u => u.UserId = SessionHandler.UserId).FirstOrDefault();