ASP.NET session state store provider for MySql

- 2 minutes read - 361 words

As I mentioned earlier here, my website ultimately is .NET ready .

Since I have quite a number of photos online that are off the record, I wanted to ‘protect’ them using forms authentication (within the former web hosting package developed in PHP I was using .htaccess and .htpassword files in order to protect complete directories).

So, from my professional experience, I know that saving data in session is feasible. However, the problem comes with a clustered environment that you usually run into in production environments. One possible solution now is to store session data in a database. Since the package I ordered at Easy CGI does not come with a MS SQL Server database (unless you add it as an additional feature to your package) you are limited to MS Access or MySql as your database management system … well, this actually isn’t that much of a choice since MS Access is not really suitable in a multi-user environment.

Looking on the web I was not able to find a suitable solution that uses MySql as its session state store. It may certainly be possible that there is already a better solution available (if so, please do not hesitate to contact me). However, I was able to find a sample session state store provider using MS Access. That’s it! Port it to MySql … and that’s what I did.

But, let’s do it step by step. The list below gives you an idea on what I did in order to get it to work:

  1. Downloaded the sample session state store provider for MS Access from MSDN, original URL https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/aspnet/ms178589(v=vs.100).
  2. Downloaded the .NET Connector (using version 5.0.7) from MySql.
  3. Ported the sample code provided by Microsoft for use with MySql (the zipped source code can be found https://www.kimpel.com/FileDownloader.aspx?file=MySqlSessionStateStore v.0.1.zip).
  4. Adjusted the Web.config accordingly:
<configuration xmlns\="https://schemas.microsoft.com/.NetConfiguration/v2.0"\>
  <connectionStrings\>
    <add name\="MySqlSessionServices" connectionString\="Database=<name of database>; Data Source=<host>; User Id=<login>; Password=<password>"/>
  </connectionStrings\>
  <system.web\>
  <sessionState cookieless\="false" regenerateExpiredSessionId\="true" mode\="Custom" customProvider\="MySqlSessionProvider"\>
  <providers\>
    <add name\="MySqlSessionProvider" type\="Samples.AspNet.Session.MySqlSessionStateStore" connectionStringName\="MySqlSessionServices" writeExceptionsToEventLog\="false"/>  
  </providers\>  
  </sessionState\>
  </system.web\>
</configuration\>

You can check it out at www.kimpel.com … it works like a charm .

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions and/or comments.