State management in ASP.

NET
State management is the process by which you maintain state and page information over multiple
requests for the same or different pages.

Types of State Management

There are 2 types State Management:

1. Client – Side State Management

This stores information on the client's computer by embedding the information into a Web page,
a uniform resource locator(url), or a cookie. The techniques available to store the state
information at the client end are listed down below:

a. View State – Asp.Net uses View State to track the values in the Controls. You can add custom
values to the view state. It is used by the Asp.net page framework to automatically save the
values of the page and of each control just prior to rendering to the page. When the page is
posted, one of the first tasks performed by page processing is to restore view state.

b. Control State – If you create a custom control that requires view state to work properly, you
should use control state to ensure other developers don’t break your control by disabling view
state.

c. Hidden fields – Like view state, hidden fields store data in an HTML form without displaying
it in the user's browser. The data is available only when the form is processed.

d. Cookies – Cookies store a value in the user's browser that the browser sends with every page
request to the same server. Cookies are the best way to store state data that must be available for
multiple Web pages on a web site.

e. Query Strings - Query strings store values in the URL that are visible to the user. Use query
strings when you want a user to be able to e-mail or instant message state data with a URL.

2. Server – Side State Management

a. Application State - Application State information is available to all pages, regardless of which
user requests a page.

b. Session State – Session State information is available to all pages opened by a user during a
single visit.

Both application state and session state information is lost when the application restarts. To
persist user data between application restarts, you can store it using profile properties.

Implementation Procedure
Client – Side State Management:

View State:
The ViewState property provides a dictionary object for retaining values between multiple
requests for the same page. When an ASP.NET page is processed, the current state of the page
and controls is hashed into a string and saved in the page as a hidden field. If the data is too long
for a single field, then ASP.NET performs view state chunking (new in ASP.NET 2.0) to split it
across multiple hidden fields. The following code sample demonstrates how view state adds data
as a hidden form within a Web page’s HTML:
<input type="hidden" name="__VIEWSTATE" id="__VIEWSTATE”
value="/wEPDwUKMTIxNDIyOTM0Mg9kFgICAw9kFgICAQ8PFgIeBFRleHQFEzQvNS8yMDA2IDE6Mzc
6MTEgUE1kZGROWHn/rt75XF/pMGnqjqHlH66cdw==" />

Encrypting of the View State: You can enable view state encryption to make it more difficult for
attackers and malicious users to directly read view state information. Though this adds
processing overhead to the Web server, it supports in storing confidential information in view
state. To configure view state encryption for an application does the following:
<Configuration>

<system.web>

<pages viewStateEncryptionMode="Always"/>

</system.web>

</configuration>

Alternatively, you can enable view state encryption for a specific page by setting the value in the
page directive, as the following sample demonstrates:
<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="Default.aspx.cs"
Inherits="_Default" ViewStateEncryptionMode="Always"%>

View State is enabled by default, but if you can disable it by setting the EnableViewState
property for each web control to false. This reduces the server processing time and decreases
page size.
Reading and Writing Custom View State Data:
If you have a value that you’d like to keep track of while the user is visiting a single ASP.NET
Web page, adding a custom value to ViewState is the most efficient and secure way to do that.
However, ViewState is lost if the user visits a different Web page, so it is useful only for
temporarily storing values.
Example: Determine the time of last visit to the page
// Check if View State object exists, and display it if it does
If (ViewState ["lastVisit"]!= null)

Label1.Text = (string)ViewState["lastVisit"]; else

Label1.Text = "lastVisit ViewState not defined.";

// Define the ViewState object for the next page view

ViewState.Add("lastVisit", DateTime.Now.ToString());

Control State: If you create a custom control that requires ViewState, you can use the
ControlState property to store state information for your control. ControlState allows you to
persist property information that is specific to a control and cannot be turned off like the
ViewState property. To use control state in a custom control, your control must override the
OnInit method and call the Register-RequiresControlState method during initialization and then
override the SaveControl-State and LoadControlState methods.

Hidden fields: ViewState stores information in the Web page using hidden fields. Hidden fields
are sent back to the server when the user submits a form; however, the information is never
displayed by the Web browser (unless the user chooses to view the page source). ASP.NET
allows you to create your own custom hidden fields and store values that are submitted with
other form data. A HiddenField control stores a single variable in its Value property and must be
explicitly added to the page. You can use hidden fields only to store information for a single
page, so it is not useful for storing session data. If you use hidden fields, you must submit your
pages to the server using Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) POST (which happens if the user
presses a button) rather than requesting the page using HTTP GET (which happens if the user
clicks a link). Unlike view state data, hidden fields have no built-in compression, encryption,
hashing, or chunking, so users can view or modify data stored in hidden fields.

Cookies: Web applications can store small pieces of data in the client’s Web browser by using
cookies. A cookie is a small amount of data that is stored either in a text file on the client file
system (if the cookie is persistent) or in memory in the client browser session (if the cookie is
temporary). The most common use of cookies is to identify a single user as he or she visits
multiple Web pages.

Reading and Writing Cookies:

A Web application creates a cookie by sending it to the client as a header in an HTTP response.
The Web browser then submits the same cookie to the server with every new request.
Create a cookie -> add a value to the Response.Cookies HttpCookieCollection.
Read a cookie -> read values in Request.Cookies.
Example:
// Check if cookie exists, and display it if it does

if (Request.Cookies["lastVisit"] != null) // Encode the cookie in case the

cookie contains client-side script Label1.Text =
Server.HtmlEncode(Request.Cookies["lastVisit"].Value);

else Label1.Text = "No value defined";

// Define the cookie for the next visit Response.Cookies["lastVisit"].Value =

DateTime.Now.ToString();Response.Cookies["lastVisit"].Expires =
DateTime.Now.AddDays(1);

If you do not define the Expires property, the browser stores it in memory and the cookie is lost
if the user closes his or her browser.

To delete a cookie, overwrite the cookie and set an expiration date in the past. You can’t directly
delete cookies because they are stored on the client’s computer.
Controlling the Cookie Scope: By default, browsers won’t send a cookie to a Web site with a
different hostname. You can control a cookie’s scope to either limit the scope to a specific folder
on the Web server or expand the scope to any server in a domain. To limit the scope of a cookie
to a folder, set the Path property, as the following example demonstrates:

Example:
Response.Cookies["lastVisit"].Path = "/Application1";

Through this the scope is limited to the “/Application1” folder that is the browser submits the
cookie to any page with in this folder and not to pages in other folders even if the folder is in the
same server. We can expand the scope to a particular domain using the following statement:
Example:
Response.Cookies[“lastVisit”].Domain = “Contoso”;

Storing Multiple Values in a Cookie:

Though it depends on the browser, you typically can’t store more than 20 cookies per site, and
each cookie can be a maximum of 4 KB in length. To work around the 20-cookie limit, you can
store multiple values in a cookie, as the following code demonstrates:
Example:
Response.Cookies["info"]["visit"].Value = DateTime.Now.ToString();

Response.Cookies["info"]["firstName"].Value = "Tony";

Response.Cookies["info"]["border"].Value = "blue";

Response.Cookies["info"].Expires = DateTime.Now.AddDays(1);

Running the code in this example sends a cookie with the following value to the Web browser:
(visit=4/5/2006 2:35:18 PM) (firstName=Tony) (border=blue)

Query Strings: Query strings are commonly used to store variables that identify specific pages,
such as search terms or page numbers. A query string is information that is appended to the end
of a page URL. A typical query string might look like the following real-world example:
http://support.microsoft.com/Default.aspx?kbid=315233
In this example, the URL identifies the Default.aspx page. The query string (which starts with a
question mark [?]) contains a single parameter named “kbid,” and a value for that parameter,
“315233.” Query strings can also have multiple parameters, such as the following real-world
URL, which specifies a language and query when searching the Microsoft.com Web site:
http://search.microsoft.com/results.aspx?mkt=en-US&setlang=en-US&q=hello+world

Value Name | ASP.NET Object | Value

mkt | Request.QueryString[“mkt”] | en-US
setlang | Request.QueryString[“setlang”] | en-US
q | Request.QueryString[“q”] | hello world

Limitations for Query Strings:

1. Some Browsers and client devices impose a 2083 – character limit on the length of the URL.
2. You must submit the page using an HTTP GET command in order for query string values to
be available during page processing. Therefore, you shouldn’t add query strings to button targets
in forms.
3. You must manually add query string values to every hyperlink that the user might click.
Example:
Label1.Text = "User: " + Server.HtmlEncode(Request.QueryString["user"]) +

", Prefs: " + Server.HtmlEncode(Request.QueryString["prefs"]) +

", Page: " + Server.HtmlEncode(Request.QueryString["page"]);

Server - Side State Management:

Application State: ASP.NET allows you to save values using application state, a global storage
mechanism that is accessible from all pages in the Web application. Application state is stored in
the Application key/value dictionary. Once you add your application-specific information to
application state, the server manages it, and it is never exposed to the client. Application state is
a great place to store information that is not user-specific. By storing it in the application state,
all pages can access data from a single location in memory, rather than keeping separate copies
of the data. Data stored in the Application object is not permanent and is lost any time the
application is restarted.

ASP.NET provides three events that enable you to initialize Application variables (free resources
when the application shuts down) and respond to Application errors:

a. Application_Start: Raised when the application starts. This is the perfect place to initialize
Application variables.
b. Application_End: Raised when an application shuts down. Use this to free application
resources and perform logging.

c. Application_Error: Raised when an unhandled error occurs. Use this to perform error logging.

Session State: ASP.NET allows you to save values using session state, a storage mechanism that
is accessible from all pages requested by a single Web browser session. Therefore, you can use
session state to store user-specific information. Session state is similar to application state,
except that it is scoped to the current browser session. If different users are using your
application, each user session has a different session state. In addition, if a user leaves your
application and then returns later after the session timeout period, session state information is
lost and a new session is created for the user. Session state is stored in the Session key/value
dictionary.

You can use session state to accomplish the following tasks:

i. Uniquely identify browser or client-device requests and map them to individual session
instances on the server. This allows you to track which pages a user saw on your site during a
specific visit.

ii. Store session-specific data on the server for use across multiple browser or client-device
requests during the same session. This is perfect for storing shopping cart information.

iii. Raise appropriate session management events. In addition, you can write application code
leveraging these events.

ASP.NET session state supports several different storage options for session data:

a. InProc Stores session state in memory on the Web server. This is the default, and it offers
much better performance than using the ASP.NET state service or storing state information in a
database server. InProc is fine for simple applications, but robust applications that use multiple
Web servers or must persist session data between application restarts should use State Server or
SQLServer.

b. StateServer Stores session state in a service called the ASP.NET State Service. This ensures
that session state is preserved if the Web application is restarted and also makes session state
available to multiple Web servers in a Web farm. ASP.NET State Service is included with any
computer set up to run ASP.NET Web applications; however, the service is set up to start
manually by default. Therefore, when configuring the ASP.NET State Service, you must set the
startup type to Automatic.
c. SQLServer Stores session state in a SQL Server database. This ensures that session state is
preserved if the Web application is restarted and also makes session state available to multiple
Web servers in a Web farm. On the same hardware, the ASP.NET State Service outperforms
SQLServer. However, a SQL Server database offers more robust data integrity and reporting
capabilities.

d. Custom Enables you to specify a custom storage provider. You also need to implement the
custom storage provider.

e. Off Disables session state. You should disable session state if you are not using it to improve
performance.

Advantages

Advantages of Client – Side State Management:

1. Better Scalability: With server-side state management, each client that connects to the Web
server consumes memory on the Web server. If a Web site has hundreds or thousands of
simultaneous users, the memory consumed by storing state management information can become
a limiting factor. Pushing this burden to the clients removes that potential bottleneck.

2. Supports multiple Web servers: With client-side state management, you can distribute
incoming requests across multiple Web servers with no changes to your application because the
client provides all the information the Web server needs to process the request. With server-side
state management, if a client switches servers in the middle of the session, the new server does
not necessarily have access to the client’s state information. You can use multiple servers with
server-side state management, but you need either intelligent load-balancing (to always forward
requests from a client to the same server) or centralized state management (where state is stored
in a central database that all Web servers access).

Advantages of Server – Side State Management:

1. Better security: Client-side state management information can be captured (either in transit or
while it is stored on the client) or maliciously modified. Therefore, you should never use client-
side state management to store confidential information, such as a password, authorization level,
or authentication status.

2. Reduced bandwidth: If you store large amounts of state management information, sending that
information back and forth to the client can increase bandwidth utilization and page load times,
potentially increasing your costs and reducing scalability. The increased bandwidth usage affects
mobile clients most of all, because they often have very slow connections. Instead, you should
store large amounts of state management data (say, more than 1 KB) on the server.