"session" Object - Sharing Data across ASP Pages

ASP Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟"session" Object - Sharing Data across ASP Pages

This section provides a tutorial example on how to use the 'session' object provided by the ASP programming interface to share data across ASP pages.

session: An object provided by the server to hold information and methods common to all ASP pages running under one session.

Contents: A collection object acting an cache for different ASP pages to share information. Since "Contents" is the default collection, we write 'session.Contents("myVar")' as 'session("myVar")'.
Abandon(): A method to destroy the current session.
SessionID: A read only property to return the id of the current session.
TimeOut: A property to set timeout period on this session.
OnStart(): An event handler to be called when the first HTTP request comes from a new user.
OnEnd(): An event handler to be called the session is abandoned or timed out.

Here is a simple ASP page shows you the session object, session_test.asp:

<script language="vbscript" runat="server">
'  session_test.asp
'  Copyright (c) 2002 by Dr. Herong Yang
   session("PATH_INFO") = request.ServerVariables("PATH_INFO")
   response.write("<html><body>")
   response.write("<b>Tests on the session object</b>:<br/>")
   response.write("session.SessionID = " & session.SessionID & "<br/>")
   set c = session.Contents
   response.write("session.Contents.Count = " & c.Count & "<br/>")
   for each v in c
      response.write( v & " = " & c.Item(v) & "<br/>")
   next
   response.write("</body></html>")   
</script>

Output:

Tests on the session object:
session.SessionID = 1018427069
session.Contents.Count = 1
PATH_INFO = /session_test.asp

Note that session.Contents is empty initially. I added the "PATH_INFO" of the current request to it to show you how add and retrieve a parameter from session.Contents.