Question

So I have a method that I “borrowed” from the internet that I use on many of my pages to handle the sorting of a grid column.

        private string GetSortDirection(string column)
    {

        // By default, set the sort direction to ascending.
        string sortDirection = "ASC";

        // Retrieve the last column that was sorted.
        string sortExpression = ViewState["SortExpression"] as string;

        if (sortExpression != null)
        {
            // Check if the same column is being sorted.
            // Otherwise, the default value can be returned.
            if (sortExpression == column)
            {
                string lastDirection = ViewState["SortDirection"] as string;
                if ((lastDirection != null) && (lastDirection == "ASC"))
                {
                    sortDirection = "DESC";
                }
            }
        }

        // Save new values in ViewState.
        ViewState["SortDirection"] = sortDirection;
        ViewState["SortExpression"] = column;

        return sortDirection;
    }

Now it works great, but alas, I must copy it to every page that I want to call it from because it references the viewstate. So I want to move it to my helper class and have it store in the session state instead, however, I can referernce neither State in the helper class.

Is their any way to access the session from a help class? Can I pass by reference the session state?

Answer 1

If I understand the question correctly, you’re looking to access ViewState or Session from a class that is not a page.

If so, you can use HttpContext.Current.Session, or, you should be able to typecast HttpContext.Current.CurrentHandler to type Page, and then access the ViewState.

Alternatively, you could always just put your code in a base class, which all your pages will inherit from, rather than inheriting from System.Web.UI.Page.