My first MVC widget & null session state.

Posted by Community Admin on 30-Jul-2012 00:00

Hello everyone.

I've just spent this morning setting up a new SF 5.1 website running on IIS 7 and have built an MVC widget. currently the set up is as follows:

Home page with a login
Logged in page with a link to an MVC page
MVC page that contains solely the MVC widget; the widget being a straight port of an MVC webapp I have been working on.

I've got it all up and running for the most part (i.e. it builds and I can hit an MVC view) but I am struggling with session state.

Attached you will find a picture of the controller structure. As you can see, I have a generic, 'common' controller and another 'standard' controller that calls into/inherits from this common controller.
Below you will find exerts from these controller classes:

Standard

namespace SitefinityWebApp.MVC.Controllers

[ControllerToolboxItem(Name = "HealthChecker", Title="Healthchecker", SectionName="Healthchecker") ]

public class HealthCheckerController : HealthCheckerCommon

public ActionResult Start()

try

var localId = new Guid("EAEA9495-2A03-4E1E-B362-090466359A76");

var data = (from r in db.Reviews where r.AccountId == localId select r);

return View(data);

catch (Exception ex)

ExceptionHelper.WriteLog(ex);

return RedirectToAction("Error");

Common

namespace SitefinityWebApp.MVC.Controllers

public class HealthCheckerCommon : Controller

public void SaveModelToSession(CalculationQuestion model)

try

Session[string.Format("0_model", model.ReviewId)] = model;

catch (Exception ex)

ExceptionHelper.WriteLog(ex);

return;

This works fine and dandy in a bog standard web app outside of sitefinity.

However, when I come to look at HttpContext.Session within SF, all I am seeing is "HttpContext.Session == null" which makes me sad. I have tried fully qualifying the Session (with HttpContext) but this still produces the same null result.

How do I go about ensuring my HttpContext.Session is not null - do I have to initialise and instance of HttpContext.Session when a user first lands in my MVC side of the web app?

Is there a configuration in the wbeconfig or SF web site I need to add/amend to get this working? I don't believe this is an IIS issue given I have this up and running exactly as is out of SF so just wondering what could possibly be the issue.

Any help, tips or pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Posted by Community Admin on 30-Jul-2012 00:00

I am interested to see Telerik's response to this.

Are you calling this code and seeing the null within your controller or from the Razor view?

Posted by Community Admin on 30-Jul-2012 00:00

Hi Dan.

The exception is being thrown within the controller itself.

Give me an hour or so, and I'll put some more detail up in my original post (time to give my daughter stories!).

I only popped this up quickly in the hope that it was a common issue.

Posted by Community Admin on 30-Jul-2012 00:00

No rush on my end, I may not be able to help on this quite yet. I am still learning the interactions between Sitefinity and MVC too.

If it had been an MVC issue (data not passing between Controller and View), I would most likely have the answer for you. But seeing as it may be an issue between Sitefinity and the Controller, that's an area I am also interested in, but not proficient in yet.