Prevent Session Timeout

[Arthur Dent]

Hello all, i am at idea's end here...
We have an ASP.NET 2 app, which we want to prevent from ever timing out... i
have tried every thing i can think of... and have search all over, and have
not found anything new;
I have tried putting little spots in my master page which call back to the
server on a regular interval. I make sure to give them every non-caching
directive and/or header i can think of, and it still keeps timing out;
I have also tried setting the timeout setting on the application in IIS to a
very large value (16 hours!)... but people STILL get timed out; ... there's
GOTTA be some, RELIABLE way to prevent timeouts... anyone have any ideas??

Thanks in advance!!!!!
- Arthur Dent;

 

[Patrick]

Check out the IIS State Service

http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2003/11/21/57453.aspx

You'll pay a performance penalty, but you won't hit a timeout due to a
process recycle.

Before you go this route, you might want to analyze your event logs to see
if there is some reason why you keep losing session states.

 

[Mark Fitzpatrick]

Have you checked to ensure that the application is timing out or the
session? Keep in mind though, you want sessions to timeout. Timeout of
sessions enables the application to recover reasources. Resources that will
get used up eventually if your site gets any kind of traffic. It also lets
the app unload when it hasn't been in use for 20 minutes or so and more
garbage collection to occur, as well as releasing additional connections
back into the pool (no matter how good you are at this, connections still
dissappear from the pool slowly but surely).

The big question is though, what are you trying to prevent timing out? A
user login session, some data that's stored in the session state? Knowing
what is actually going on may help us provide better information. A lot of
people who come looking for a solution to a problem find out they have the
wrong problem or are looking for solutions to things that would have been
better handled by doing something a little differently.

 

[Arthur Dent]

Well, the application is a support ticketing system; ... which will be used
both by our office staff and by our clients to submit support requests; this
biggest problem with timing out is the ticket entry page;... that's the real
problem, its not so much an issue for the rest of the site (except perhaps
some of the admin pages) ... we have it so people can remember themselves on
the site so when it times out it automatically logs'em back in almost
transparently.

The problem comes in with the ticket entry page, especially for our staff.
e.g. ... our office manager finds herself frequently, in the middle of
typing in a call with a long description, when another call will come in or
someone comes up and interrupts her, and so she is taken away from typing
the ticket .... then when she finally gets back to it, it has timed out on
her, and when she goes to save it, she loses all the information she has
typed in. This is the real crux of the problem, and has caused her (and
others to a lesser degree) an enormous amount of frustration on numerous
occasions. ...

Actually, it would be cool if i could just do something like yahoo's new
ajaxified webmail interface; when your session times out in the middle of
writing an email on their site, it prompts you to log back in, but somehow,
it has remembered everything that that you had typed in and you can just
pick up where you left off.

So that would be a viable alternative, but its that or to somehow prevent
timeouts. But that is the real issue, is trying to keep people from losing
information they may have begun typing in.

Thanks in advance for any pointers or information;

 

[Aidy]

we have it so people can remember themselves on the site so when it times

out it automatically logs'em back in almost transparently.

Why doesn't that solve your problem?

 

[Arthur Dent]

for most pages, it does.... except for the data entry pages...where someone
may have been typing in a boatload of stuff on a ticket, then gets
interrupted, then comes back tries to save, it times out, and now all the
stuff they typed in is gone;

 

[Aidy]

If you log them on when the Session starts then does the data not continue
to POST to your page to be saved?

 

[Arthur Dent]

Maybe, i dont know. The site uses formsauthentication, so when it times out,
it redirects itself back to the login page, which then performs the
autologin and a FormsAuthentication.RedirectFromLogin; ... so i would think
the data if it does get POSTed, it would be to the login page.

 

[Aidy]

What you need is a process that logs the user in transparently via the
session start event, not one that directs you off to the login page.
Obviously this will only work on people who have requested to be "remebered"
or "auto logged on".

 

[George Ter-Saakov]

See my article on codeproject

http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/SessionForever.asp

George.