ViewState Vs Session … maintaining object through page lifecycle

Question

Can someone please explain the difference between ViewState and Session?

More specifically, I\'d like to know the best way to keep an object available (continuously

Answer 1

First of all Viewstate is per page where as the session exists throughout the application during the current session, if you want your searchobject to persist across pages then session is the right way to go.

Second of all Viewstate is transferred as encrypted text between the browser and the server with each postback, so the more you store in the Viewstate the more data is going down to and coming back from the client each time, whereas the session is stored server side and the only thing that goes back and forth is a session identifier, either as a cookie or in the URL.

Whether the session or viewstate is the right place to store your search object depends on what you are doing with it and what data is in it, hopefully the above explanation will help you decide the right method to use.