ASP.NET 4 Unleashed

Using Cookieless Session State

By default, Session state depends on cookies. The ASP.NET Framework uses the ASP.NET_SessionId cookie to identity a user across page requests so that the correct data can be associated with the correct user. If a user disables cookies in the browser, Session state doesn’t work.

If you want Session state to work even when cookies are disabled, you can take advantage of cookieless sessions. When cookieless sessions are enabled, a user’s session ID is added to the page URL.

Here’s a sample of what a page URL looks like when cookieless sessions are enabled:

http://localhost:4945/Original/(S(5pnh11553sszre45oevthxnn))/SomePage.aspx

The strange-looking code in this URL is the current user’s Session ID. It is the same ...