Question

I have a controller that needs to persist the state of a Dictionary member. On navigating to a specific action, an entry for that user is created and added to the dictionary. I require a separate ajax action to pull the object out, use it, and save it back, however it seems as though between the two events my dictionary is being collected.

Now I’ve tried a number of things to ensure that this dictionary stays put but to no avail. As a requirement, I need this dictionary to stay resident in memory for quick access. I understand that MVC is supposed to be stateless and I should use a different kind of backing store. Suggestions?

Answer 1

From your description putting the dictionary into the Session should be an option. The session store has the following properties:

• Stays alive between requests.
• Complete separation of different uses/sessions.
• Easy to set up – no database or file to configure.
• Quick access since it is normally handled in memory.
• Not suitable for large amounts of data.
• The session store is cleared if the application pool is recycled (which happends sometimes).