Question

instead of doing

 session('myvar1') = something  session('myvar2') = something  session('myvar3') = something  session('myvar4') = something 

is doing

enum sessionVar    myvar1    myvar2    myvar3    myvar4 end enum    session(sessionVar.myvar1.tostring) = something  session(sessionVar.myvar2.tostring) = something  session(sessionVar.myvar3.tostring) = something  session(sessionVar.myvar4.tostring) = something 

would be better?

Answer 1

Instead of using constants for the session keys, I’m using my own type-safe session object, which looks like this (sorry this is in C#, see below for a VB version):

public class MySession {   // Private constructor (use MySession.Current to access the current instance).   private MySession() {}    // Gets the current session.   public static MySession Current   {     get     {       MySession session = HttpContext.Current.Session['__MySession__'] as MySession;       if (session == null)       {         session = new MySession();         HttpContext.Current.Session['__MySession__'] = session;       }       return session;     }   }    // My session data goes here:   public string MyString { get; set; };   public bool MyFlag { get; set; };   public int MyNumber { get; set; }; } 

Whenever I need to read/write something to/from the session, I can use my typesafe session object like this:

string s = MySession.Current.MyString; s = 'new value'; MySession.Current.MyString = s; 

This solution results in several advantages:

• I have a typesafe Session (no more type-casts)
• I can document all session based data (by commenting the public properties in MySession)
• When adding a new element to the session, I don’t have to search the solution to check if the same session-key was already used somewhere else.

Update: Here’s a VB version (automatically converted from the C# version). Sorry, but I don’t know VB and so I didn’t know how to write the properties in VB:

Public Class MySession     ' Private constructor (use MySession.Current to access the current instance).     Private Sub New()     End Sub      ' Gets the current session.     Public Shared ReadOnly Property Current() As MySession         Get             Dim session As MySession = TryCast(HttpContext.Current.Session('__MySession__'), MySession)             If session = Nothing Then                 session = New MySession()                 HttpContext.Current.Session('__MySession__') = session             End If             Return session         End Get     End Property      ' My session data goes here:     Public MyString As String     Public MyFlag As Boolean     Public MyNumber As Integer End Class