Programming Practice for Server Side State Maintenance Variable

Introduction

Http protocol is stateless, so we need to maintain state on Client side or Server side. For this time, I am going to discuss about the maintaining state on Server Side with one programming practice.

Problem

To maintain state on Server side, most of the developers use Session, Caching, Application variables. But most of the beginner developers make one mistake, which is:

session["myData"] = data;

Code pushes data in session variable(s).

Data = (Conversion_To_Data_Type_Of_Data) session["mydata"];

Code gets data back from session variable.So most of the developers follow the above procedure to push and get data from server side variable.

Disadvantages

1. Developer requires remembering name of string value, i.e., name of the variable. If you refer to the above code, it's mydata.
2. If there are a number of developers working on a project, it’s hard to maintain server side variable if we follow the above procedure, i.e., your maintenance increases.
3. If there are large number of developers working in your project, you require to inform each and every one about the variable you are declaring.

Solution

The easiest solution that I found after doing so much programming is as follows:

Step 1

Create one static class:

public class SessionPropeties
{
 // code
}

Step 2

Create property for each session variable of your application as shown below:

public int UserId
{
        get
        {
           if(HttpContext.Current.Session["UserID"]!=null)
            return Convert.ToInt32(HttpContext.Current.Session["UserID"].ToString());
           else
          return 0;
        }
        set
        {
            HttpContext.Current.Session["UserID"] = value;
        }
}

After following the above steps, the class will be like below:

public class SessionPropeties
{
 public DataType prop1
 {
        get
        {
           if(HttpContext.Current.Session["prop1"]!=null)
            return Convert.ToDataType (HttpContext.Current.Session["prop1"].ToString());
           else
            return defaultvalue;
        }
        set
        {
            HttpContext.Current.Session["prop1"] = value;
        }
      
 }
 public DataType prop2
 {
        get
        {
           if(HttpContext.Current.Session["prop2"]!=null)
            return Convert.ToDataType (HttpContext.Current.Session["prop2"].ToString());
           else
            return defaultvalue;
        }
        set
        {
            HttpContext.Current.Session["prop2"] = value;
        }
      
 }
 
 ...........
 
}

Step 3

In coding to get and set data, you just require to call these properties.

To set data

SessionProperties.UserId = 1;

To get data

int userid = SessionProperties.UserId;

Advantages

1. Once you declare your properties, you do not need to remember it. You just need to call your Session property class.
2. Maintenance becomes easy when project size is large or there are a number of developers working in a team, because you just need to refer to the Sessionproperties class having all severside properties. And you can also add property you need and you don’t require to inform all the people working in your team.

Summary

You can maintain your Cache and Application server side variable in a similar way. So it's better you encapsulate your server side variable in one class which makes your task easy when you do code in web application.

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)