Getting session data without passing from Service

ServiceStack Authentication
1

Historically with one of our apps we’ve really only used Session for Auth purposes and there is almost no logic that cares about the user - other than group membership everyone is treated the same. Therefore, we don’t pass context around.

However, that’s changing now…

So this is probably a dumb question… but is there any easier way to have a function deep in a call stack get session data without passing it all the way down from the service method?

2

What we normally do is attach the object we want to the Session, and then use it in any service call.

as an example:

###1. create your object

    public class MyCustomAuthSession: AuthUserSession
    {
        public MyCustomAuthSession() { }

        public B2BCustomer B2BCustomer {get; set;}
            public long OrderId {get; set;}
        }

###2. register the object:

     this.Plugins.Add(
           new AuthFeature(() => 
                new MyCustomAuthSession(), 
                new IAuthProvider[] {  ...  })));

###3. populate it upon authentication

      public override bool TryAuthenticate (
             IServiceBase authService, string userName, string password)
      {
         var customer = new B2BCustomer();

          // authenticate as normal
          // then if authenticated, get the object an attach to the session 

          var session = authService.GetSession(false) as MyCustomAuthSession;
          session.B2BCustomer = customer;
       }

###4. retrieve the session on your service

       public object Put(OrderItems request)
       {
           var session = this.GetSession() as GkoAuthSession;
           ...
       }

Is this what you are looking for, or I just didn’t understood the question? :frowning:

1 Like
3

Ok, yes, I have all that working.

Maybe better stated my question is… can a method outside the service object gain session context without it being passed explicitly down.

I think the answer to my question is no. We have a lot of retrofitting to do.

4

If you’re using an ASP.NET Host you can get the Session from the IRequest with:

var req = HostContext.TryGetCurrentRequest();
var session = req.GetSession();

But this doesn’t work in HttpListener Self-Hosts so we recommend against it.

If you’re able to pass the Users SessionId (e.g. ss-id Cookie) you can also retrieve the Session from the ICacheClient directly, e.g:

var sessionKey = SessionFeature.GetSessionKey(sessionId);
var session = HostContext.Cache.Get<AuthUserSession>(sessionKey);