Sessions are a safer, more effective alternative to
cookies. This tutorial will teach you how to use sessions
in ASP.
Sessions are defined as a unique visit
to a particular website and it's child pages. Each session
can contain data, and the data in the session variables
are user-specific. This data is stored during the entirety
of the session, and is only accessible by the ASP pages
which the user views or executes. How can ASP sessions
be useful? Take an example: you have a large website
with many users, and a user decides to log on using
his username and password. How can you store this data
for the entirety of his visit? You have two plausible
choices: Cookies, and Sessions.
The advantage of using cookies is
that once he logs in, the cookie stores the visitors
information on that computer for as long as the duration
of the cookie, even if the session is over. For example,
if he logs in and browses around your site and then
closes IE, and comes back tomorrow to your page, it'll
still remember his name and password. The obvious disadvantage
of cookies is that it's a security hazard. Also, some
people have cookies disabled so it may not be a viable
solution. ASP Sessions are a safer, guaranteed working
method of storing variables in ASP throughout the duration
of the visitors stay.
Because sessions automatically start
upon the users arrival to the site, we don't need to
declare that session variables will be used.
Here we store a username "Bobert"
into a session variable:
| <%
Session("username")="Bobert"
%> |
Think of Session("username") as any other
variable. you could
| response.write Session("username")="Bobert" |
just like you could any other variable.
If you want to destroy the contents of a session variable,
you can use this piece of code:
| <%
Session.Contents.Remove("username")
%>
And i |
If you want to destroy the entire session prematurely,
you can use this:
I hope you find this a safe yet effective way to store
data such as a username or password.
|
