How to find out size of session in ASP.NET from web application?

Question

How to find out size of session in ASP.NET from web application?

Answer 1

If you're trying to get the size of Session during runtime rather than in debug tracing, you might want to try something like this:

long totalSessionBytes = 0;
BinaryFormatter b = new BinaryFormatter();
MemoryStream m;
foreach(var obj in Session) 
{
  m = new MemoryStream();
  b.Serialize(m, obj);
  totalSessionBytes += m.Length;
}

(Inspired by http://www.codeproject.com/KB/session/exploresessionandcache.aspx)

Answer 2

The code in the answer above kept giving me the same number. Here is the code that finally worked for me:

private void ShowSessionSize()
{
    Page.Trace.Write("Session Trace Info");

    long totalSessionBytes = 0;
    System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.BinaryFormatter b = 
        new System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.BinaryFormatter();
    System.IO.MemoryStream m;
    foreach (string key in Session)
    {
        var obj = Session[key];
        m = new System.IO.MemoryStream();
        b.Serialize(m, obj);
        totalSessionBytes += m.Length;

        Page.Trace.Write(String.Format("{0}: {1:n} kb", key, m.Length / 1024));
    }

    Page.Trace.Write(String.Format("Total Size of Session Data: {0:n} kb", 
       totalSessionBytes / 1024));
}

Answer 3

I think you can find that information by adding Trace="true" to the page directive of a aspx page. Then when the page loads you can see a large number of details regarding the page request, including session information i think.

You can also enable tracing in your entire application by adding a line to your web.config file. Something like:

<trace enabled="true" requestLimit="10" pageOutput="true" traceMode="SortByTime" 
 localOnly="true"/>