ASP.NET Session State Provider Properties

Storing ASP.NET sessions in NCache requires no programming. NCache Session State Provider is a custom SessionStateStoreProviderBase implementation for an ASP.NET application. In order to configure and fetch ASP.NET Sessions in your application, the following modifications are required:

Pre-Requisites

To utilize Session State Provider in your application:

Install the AspNet.SessionState.NCache Enterprise/Professional/OpenSource NuGet package to your application by executing the following command in the Package Manager Console:

For Enterprise:

Install-Package AspNet.SessionState.NCache

For Professional:

Install-Package AspNet.SessionState.NCache.Professional

For OpenSource:

Install-Package AspNet.SessionState.NCache.OpenSource

To utilize the provider, include the Alachisoft.NCache.SessionStoreProvider namespaces in your application's Startup.cs.

Modify sessionState Tag

Edit your application's Web.config file and modify the <sessionState> section as given below.

<configuration>
  ...
  <sessionState cookieless="false"
                regenerateExpiredSessionId="true"
                mode="Custom"
                customProvider="NCacheSessionProvider"
                timeout="20">
    <providers>
      <add name="NCacheSessionProvider"
          type="Alachisoft.NCache.Web.SessionState.NSessionStoreProvider"
           cacheName="demoClusteredCache"
           sessionAppId="demoApp"
           exceptionsEnabled="true"
           writeExceptionsToEventLog="false"
           enableLogs="false"
           enableSessionLocking="true"
           sessionLockingRetry="-1"
           emptySessionWhenLocked="false" />       
    </providers>

  </sessionState>
...
</configuration>

Modify MachineKey Tag for Web Farms

In case of web farms, add <machineKey> entry under <system.web> section. It is required to generate ASP.NET session IDs in the same manner on all nodes.

Learn about how to generate a machine-key for a web farm:
Generate a Machine Key for a Web Farm (IIS 7)

<machineKey validationKey ="A01D6E0D1A5D2A22E0854CA612FE5C5EC4AECF24"
   decryptionKey ="ACD8EBF87C4C8937" validation ="SHA1"/>

Fetch Session Data

NCache allows viewing all session data stored in clustered cache via NCache Session State Module. All session data is added in the specified cache as a tagged cache item with Tag: NC_ASP.net_session_data.

In order to retrieve previously stored session data, data can be fetched by GetByTag API, which returns a dictionary populated with session IDs and associated session data stored in the cache.

var allSessionData = cache.SearchService.GetByTag(new Tag("NC_ASP.net_session_data"));

SessionState Properties

Following is the description of different key-value pairs specified above: