How to build a simple Session State Sink

Introduction

This code is just to:

1. Keep all of your Session management in one place.
2. Allow you to remember what your Session variables are.
3. Simplify code.

Using the code

The normal way to access the Session in a page is like this. Note that there is no intellisense, and that you will need to cast it every time you want to get it.

Week week = (Week) Session["Week"];

Here's what I'm changing it to. Note that intellisense is available to see what variables are kept in the Session.

Week week = SessionStateSink.Week; 
Plant plant = SessionStateSink.Plant;

Here is the (static) Session State Sink:

using System.Web.SessionState;

public static class SessionStateSink {
    // Getting Current Session --> This is needed, since otherwise

    // the static sink won't know what the session is.

    private static HttpSessionState Session{
        get {return HttpContext.Current.Session; }
    }
 
    // Session Variable - Auto-Create

    public static Week Week {
        get {
            if (Session["Week"] == null) {
                Session.Add("Week",new Week());
            }
            return (Week)Session["Week"];
        }
    }

    //Session Variable - Get/Set

    public static Plant Plant {
        get {
            return (Plant)Session["Plant"];
        }
        set{
            if (Session["Plant"] == null)
                Session.Add("Plant",value);
            else
                Session["Plant"] = value;
        }
    } 
}

Overall, this mostly just makes the code a little cleaner and easier to manage.

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