Sliding session for MVC sessions?

#1

I understand with SS services we can do sliding expirations a la…

http://teadriven.me.uk/2013/02/14/sliding-sessions-in-service-stack/

…but what about when using SS authentication (ie a CredentialsAuthProvider) in an MVC project? Is there something that I can override that gets called on each page load? I’m guessing there are several ways, but am wondering what would be the most logical. Maybe a GlobalFilter? Or making a custom base ServiceStackController? Obviously I’d only want it to run for authenticated requests to slide the session expiry.

#2

ServiceStack Request Pipeline is only executed for ServiceStack Requests.

For MVC requests you would need to use their extensibility options, e.g. like using an Action Filter.

#3

Just getting around to working on this. Do you have any tips to point me in the right direction so I can dig further? Should I be looking at changing the IAuthProvider.SessionExpiry or the FormsAuthentication session expiration somehow? I’m not looking to have you do legwork, just need a nudge in the right direction. :slight_smile:

#4

Just retrieving and re-saving the session will update its expiry date again. You’d want to do this in a MVC Response Filter / Filter Attribute. If you inherit ServiceStackController you’ll have access to ServiceStack providers where you can resolve the Session and ServiceStack IHttpRequest. If you have a common base controller with the MVC Filter Attribute attached you should be able to do this automatically for all requests.

#5

Thanks! I had gotten this far so it sounds like I’m almost there…

public class SlideExpirationAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute
{
    public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
    {
        var ssController = filterContext.Controller as ServiceStackController<Custom.CustomUserSession>;
        if (ssController == null) return;

        var userSession = ssController.AuthSession as Custom.CustomUserSession;
        if (userSession == null) return;

        base.OnActionExecuting(filterContext);
    }
}
#6

For those in the future who want to implement such a feature, here’s my final code that seems to work great…

public class SlideSessionExpirationAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute
{
    public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
    {
        var ssController = filterContext.Controller as ServiceStackController;
        if (ssController == null) return;

        // Get session and re-save to slide/update the expiration date
        var session = ssController.ServiceStackRequest.GetSession();
        if(session != null && session.IsAuthenticated)
            ssController.ServiceStackRequest.SaveSession(session, AppHost.SessionExpiration);
        
        base.OnActionExecuting(filterContext);
    }
}
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