Share an object application-wide in ASP.NET MVC3

Question

I have an ASP.NET MVC3 web application with C# and Razor.

Through a form in a View I get the Context.User.Identity.Name submitted to an action method in a Controller A.

I would like to have available this variable application-wide (between multiple controllers). Now I am just able to assign it to a global variable _UserName within the Controller A, but of course it is not available in Controller B.

Is it possible to do that?

Thanks

Francesco

Answer 1

If you are accessing this in any controller, you should use HttpContext.User.Identity in your controller methods - it will be available there. No need to store in the session.

Answer 2

Create a parent controller from which all your controllers inherit from and set the variable there. You could do a number of things with it from there--wrap it in a view model, put some user details into the ViewBag, etc

public class UserController : Controller
{
    // create your own User class with as many properties as you need
    protected User user { get; set; }

    public UserController()
    {
        user = // get user from db, wherever
    }
}

Then, just inherit from UserController

public class ControllerA : UserController
{
    public ActionResult DoSomething()
    {
        user.Property = 123;
    }
}

Answer 3

You should look into caching and possibly using the users session store this information.

Check out this question.