We're developing a video site that will be on sharepoint,
we want to limit the users to be able to watch 1 video at a time.
The limitations I have for this:
-Enable session state is not active in the farm
The things I do have control on:
-Master page
-The code itself(the video webpart etc)
The problem with Cookies for instance, is when to delete them,
I override "unload" and "dispose" events of the webparts and the page.Request wasn't available in that context
If there are solutions with Session - do suggest, but I prefer solution without the need to activate it
Thanks in advance.
found the solution for anyone who's looking:
first I put a check if there's an existing cookie on the relevant webparts, if not I create those webparts as usual and create the cookie
Second I registered the event "onunload" of the body element in the masterpage,
there I put javascript that called webservice which is responsible of clearing the created cookie- only if it was created from the same location who called the "onunload" event(I kept the url as value in the cookie)
If session is usable- the solution is the same just keeping the data in the session
Thanks for your comments
Related
I have a Layout page which sets up the list of Projects in the application using Telerik's ComboBox as shown. The combobox allows user to select a project he/she wants to work on.
Once a selection is made, I want all subsequent actions in the application should correspond to the selected Project. I can preserve the Project information in a Session but then if user chooses to open this in a new tab and in 2nd tab users switches to a different Project and comes back to the first tab and refreshes the page then the session information (Project) would have changed which will create issues in my application.
So, what is the best way for me to persist Project information of the Layout.cshtml controls so that I can use it in my application such that every page that is rendered uses the currently/correctly selected values.
Tempdata / QueryStrings came to my mind but i don't know whether they will be reasonable solution to my problem. If yes, then how should I use them generically (specially querystrings) without complicating my solution?
localStroage and sessionStorage also seems like relevant solutions but then how do I use them in scenario where user opens a new tab from existing page? How will the Project # will persist on the newly opened page/window/tab?
something like this is achievable, if you make sure the url changes when a selection is made.
So let's say you select project C-1379 in your dropdown box, at that point your url could become http://localhost:58692/pid=C-1379.
from now onwards, your page can load the desired data, retrieving its required information from the query string. Do not use session or localstorage or anything like that as it won't work.
This way, you can still load your list of projects in your layout page, and you can select one based on the query string value and then load some default values via api calls to the back end.
If all your work from now on is done based on api calls, for example, you have some properties that you change and then you issue a POST to update said details then this is very easily done as well.
telerik controls usually have some events associated with them. the one you are using should have an onChange or something like that. This where where you would update the query string with the value of the project selected and then you can proceed to do what you need
I can preserve the Project information in a Session but then if user
chooses to open this in a new tab and in 2nd tab users switches to a
different Project and comes back to the first tab and refreshes the
page then the session information (Project) would have changed which
will create issues in my application.
I would have thought this is the desired behavior... take stackoverflow.com as an example, if I change my username in one browser-tab, I would expect my username to be updated in other browser-tabs as well... and that's what happens if I refresh my other tab.
There is no built in solution for maintaining user info in different browser tabs separately... the only way to achieve this, is by sending project name back and forth in the URL... but then you would loose this info if user changes the URL... In my opinion, this is an ad hoc solution and does not worth the effort of development, because it's a very uncommon scenario.
Getting to your options:
Storing user info is a very typical use case for session variable.
TempData is stored in Session by default. Though you can write
your own custom TempDataProvider and store it somewhere else (e.g.
database, cookie, etc). See Brok Allen's Cookie TempDataProvider
as an example. One advantage of using Cookie is that you send your
session variable back and forth with the request so you don't need to
worry about Sticky Sessions.
You can of course use a permanent storage, such as DB/Disk.
If the project name is not a sensitive info then I don't see any issue in passing it in Query String.
I'm working on a business application using ASP.NET Ajax , NHibernate and Spring.Net, I've got an annoying problem. The problem is that when I leave page for about 5 minutes and then return back and try to make any action that posts back, it displays wrongly (if there are controls hidden by style it became visible). In addition, the page didn't post back to the server.
Also the problem happens when opening two different tabs, different pages (Each page uses session but different keys )
Thanks in advance
As you describe the problem, its sounds that connect the content of the page with the user cookie and session, and when the session expired the application did not take care to recreate it.
So the post back fail because the session data have been lost when the page ask for them / need them to work and display correct the results.
This is the issue that I diagnose, how you fix that is up to you :)
Possible solutions
Change the logic of the page creation.
While the user is on page do not let the session ends (not good practice)
Store the user data of the page, on a database - connected with the user, and delete it after some days if not have been updated.
I have a problem with an asp.net site (4.0 framework) I would like to understand how to properly discard of values in HttpRuntime.Cache between page requests. I am storing values for pagination , control state etc on a search page, and it works fine .. except the values for controls exist (eg. combo box selection) if i open a different browser and open the page.
You should not be using Cache in this way. Not only is it cross-browser-window... it applies to the whole application.
You should use querystring/form values for saving which page is being viewed, instead.
If you want a storage per session, the HttpContext.Current.Session is a good place to put it. As Andrew Barber points out, the Cache is application-wide (shared by all users and sessions)
I'm doing some brainstorming for a portal framework, and I'm envisioning a breadcrumb navigation stack that is tracked via the ViewState (so that if the user clicks "back" in their browser and clicks some other link, the breadcrumb trail will depart from the right page). My pages are really just ascx controls that get loaded into a placeholder control on the main portal page based on the URL. When the user clicks a portal link, there is a postback that loads the original page and invokes the given link's "clicked" handler, which should then "push" the current location onto the breadcrumb stack before sending the browser a redirect instruction to change the URL to that of the page that I want to go to.
That's as far as my brainstorming goes for the moment, because once we perform a redirect, we lose the ViewState. Rather than doing the redirect, I've thought of simply telling my main portal page to replace the current page control with the target page control, thus avoiding the extra http round-trip and allowing me to keep the ViewState. But then my entire website experience occurs in the context of a single URL, so I lose URL bookmarking among other things. And if I wrap some of my controls in AJAX panels, the entire site happens in one page request as far as the browser's history is concerned.
What I would like is some way to have the browsing history and URLs behave as if each link is leading them to a new page with a descriptive URL and all that, but still have some way to know the path that the user took to get to the page that they're on (ViewState seeming to be the simplest way to track this).
Could anyone suggest some techniques I might try using?
First suggestion... You may want to look into ASP.NET MVC. However, I have to admit to some ignorance here as I'm not sure that would really solve your problem. But it sounds like the sort of thing MVC would be suited for.
Second... it's possible to override the methods responsible for saving and loading ViewState. One of the things you can do, for instance, is push the ViewState into the Session rather than sending it down to the user and back up on postback. You could easily add some custom code here.
Third... I think you may want to rethink part of your design. The ViewState really serves one purpose: It recreates the state of the page as it existed when the page was rendered for the user. If you are moving to a different page, or a new set of controls, why would you need the ViewState at all? The ViewState itself is really just a hack to begin with... ASP.NET's way of maintaining state on top of a stateless system. (but that's a whole 'nother discussion) We have other methods of maintaining state... the primary mechanism being the Session object. Why not save your breaacrumb data there instead?
I would look at using cookies. For performance reasons, you really want to avoid HTTP redirects if you can, and ViewState only works if the user submits a form, not for regular links.
You might do something like maintain several path lists in cookies that show the path that the user took to go from one page to another. Maybe you set a unique ID with each page that is applied by some JavaScript as a query string when the user clicks on a link, and the server uses that ID and the past history from the cookies to determine how to render the bread crumb on the next page?
I am using VS 2005, C# 2, ASP.Net 2.0
I am unable to find out how to track that user pressed F5/Ctrl+F5/ Open a new Window(Ctrl + N) in ASP.Net.
I know that there is a Page.IsPostBack property, which tells that a page is loaded in response to an action taken by user.
I am just curious to know, that why isn't there a property as IsRefresh or Page.IsRefresh in ASP.Net, which will return true,
whenever user takes any of the above actions.
Is there a way to know this?
Actually my problem is that i have a DLL using which all of my aspx pages are inherited, I have to
insert some values in a table whenever the page is opened for the first time that's it, if user just opens the page or do not take any action,
an entry should be inserted into the database, but as far as I have tried, I controlled it anyhow using the Page.IsPostBack property, but I got stuck
in the refresh case, as it is inserting records unconditionally.
Similar to using a function in Global.asax (as others have suggested) you could use a session variable "flag". When the page first loads set a session variable and then just check against it in your page load function:
if (Session("visited") != "true"
//page has not been visited, log visit to DB
Just make sure you set the session flag sometime after the above check during the page load.
It won't be exact (sessions can timeout while a page is active, users can completely leave the site and come back in the same browser and the session stays alive, etc) but for your tracking it is much better than counting every page hit in the DB.
Perhaps you want the Session_Start method in the Global.asax file, which will be triggered once at the start of each user session?
In your Global.asax file, add or edit the method:
void Session_Start(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
}
why isn't there a property as IsRefresh or Page.IsRefresh in ASP.Net
Because ASP.NET cannot possibly know. The browser does not send any information that could allow it to determine whether the page is being requested due to a refresh or normal load. You will need to reconsider your requirements: what is the actual purpose of the database logging?
Session_Start method in Global.asax file is fired every time when a browser session is started. You can use this method to count number of unique users on your website.
Session_End method in Global.asax is fired when a session ends (explicitly or timedout). So you can decrement the count here.
Hope the above to example uses of these methods helps you understand how you can use them.
Because of the stateless nature of HTTP protocol there is no way to tell apart the initial load from the refresh
As has already been said. This isn't possible. A request issued due to a refresh is no different to a request issued the first time the page is loaded.
It sounds to me like you are trying to track page views somehow. This is certainly possible though it will require some work on your part. Your best bet is probably to log the URL of the page. You may also want to include the query string in order to differentiate between page loads for different pieces of data (if this happens in your application). You will also want to log the ID of the current user, and the ID of their session.
You can then make sure that you don't insert two page views for the same user for the same page in the same session, effectively filtering out any reloads of a page.
You do need to be aware that this isn't the same as detecting a refresh, what you are detecting is two page views in the same session, this could be a refresh, or it could be use of the back button, or just reloading from the address bar.
My suggestion would be to create a cookie on very first load, then on Page_Load check to see if the cookie exists. If it does, don't insert the record. You can use Session_End to destroy or create the cookie as someone suggested if that works with your application's architecture.