What is the best approach to handle session timeouts in asp.net

Question

There are various ways to handle session timeouts, like \"meta refreshes\" javascript on load functions etc.

I would like something neat like: 5 minutes before timeo

Answer 1

The only thing I can think of is to generate some script on the page that creates a client timer, so that when the page is received and rendered, it can show an alert X-minutes later (that is 5mins before expire).

If you'd rather have the session just keep itself alive, you can do this with a generic handler (ASHX) that you periodically call via AJAX. This will help refresh the session and it should stay alive for as long as the AJAX calls continue.

Example "keepalive.ASHX":

<%@ WebHandler Language="C#" Class="keepalive" %>

using System;

public class keepalive : System.Web.IHttpHandler
{       
    public void ProcessRequest (System.Web.HttpContext context) 
    {
        context.Response.ContentType = "text/json";
        var thisUser = System.Web.Security.Membership.GetUser();

        if (thisUser != null)
            context.Response.Write("[{\"User\": \"" + thisUser.UserName + "\"}]");
    }

    public bool IsReusable
    {
        get { return false; }
    }
}

And here's the script on the page to call it (with jQuery for simplicity):