Question

I have several variables that I need to send from page to page…
What is the best way to do this?

Just send them one by one:

string var1 = Session["var1"] == null ? "" : Session["var1"].ToString();
int var2 = Session["var2"] == null ? 0 : int.Parse(Session["var2"].ToString());

and so on…

Or put them all in some kind of container-object?

struct SessionData
{
    public int Var1 { get; set; }
    public string Var2 { get; set; }
    public int Var3 { get; set; }
}

—

SessionData data = Session["data"] as SessionData;

What is the best solution? What do you use?

Answer 1

A hybrid of the two is the most maintainable approach. The Session offers a low-impedance, flexible key-value pair store so it would be wasteful not to take advantage of that. However, for complex pieces of data that are always related to each other – for example, a UserProfile – it makes sense to have a deeply nested object.