ASP.NET Core Session Provider Configuration

In order to configure NCache ASP.NET Core Session Provider, follow the steps below.

Prerequisites

.NET/.NET Core

Install the following NuGet packages in your application based on your NCache Version:
- Enterprise: AspNetCore.Session.NCache
- Professional: AspNetCore.Session.NCache.Professional
- OpenSource: AspNetCore.Session.NCache.OpenSource
To utilize the extension, include the following namespaces in your application in Startup.cs:
- Alachisoft.NCache.Web.SessionState;
The cache must be running.
For API details, refer to: AddNCacheSession.
Make sure that the data being added is serializable.
To ensure the operation is fail safe, it is recommended to handle any potential exceptions within your application, as explained in Handling Failures.
To handle any unseen exceptions, refer to the Troubleshooting section.

Step 1: Configure NCache Session Management Service

The session management service needs to be initialized in Startup.cs. There are two methods to specify configurations:

Through your application in Startup.cs or
In JSON format in Appsettings.json

Note

The configuration must always contain the cache name.

Method 1: Specifying Configurations in Startup.cs

The session can be initialized by the AddNCacheSession() extension method that takes an IOptions<NCacheSessionConfiguration> object as the configuration.

In Startup.cs of your application, add the following code in ConfigureServices() method:

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
    //Add framework services
    services.AddMvc();

    //Add services to the container with configured session
    services.AddNCacheSession(configuration =>
    {
        configuration.CacheName = "demoClusteredCache";
        configuration.EnableLogs = true;
        configuration.SessionAppId = "demoApp";
        configuration.SessionOptions.IdleTimeout = 5;
        configuration.SessionOptions.CookieName = "AspNetCore.Session";
    });                   

}

Method 2: Specifying Configurations in Appsettings.json

The configurations for the services can also be provided in JSON format as a section in Appsettings.json of your ASP.NET application:

{
  "NCacheSettings": {
    "SessionAppId": "demoApp",
    "SessionOptions": {
      "CookieName": "AspNetCore.Session",
      "CookieDomain": null,
      "CookiePath": "/",
      "CookieHttpOnly": "True",
      "IdleTimeout": "5",
      "CookieSecure": "None",
     "useJsonSerialization": true,
    },

    "CacheName": "demoClusteredCache",
    "EnableLogs": "True",
    "RequestTimeout": "90"
  },
}

NCache provides the AddNCacheSession() method to initialize configurations from external files before adding the session services to the container. Using this method, you can refer to the configurations by providing the name of the section containing JSON format configurations in Appsettings.json:

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{ 
    //Add framework services
    services.AddMvc();

    //Add services to the container                    
    services.AddNCacheSession(Configuration.GetSection("NCacheSettings"));
}

Step 2: Add Middleware to Application

Once the services have been initialized, you can now configure the HTTP request pipeline by adding middleware in the Configure() method. The following is an excerpt showing the addition of a middleware layer through the use of UseNCacheSession() extension method inIApplicationBuilder. The NCache session middleware should always be stacked before the layer that utilizes the sessions.

public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IHostingEnvironment env, ILoggerFactory loggerFactory)
{
    loggerFactory.AddConsole(Configuration.GetSection("Logging"));
    loggerFactory.AddDebug();

    if (env.IsDevelopment())
    {
        app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage();
        app.UseBrowserLink();
    }
    else
    {
        app.UseExceptionHandler("/Home/Error");
    }
    app.UseStaticFiles();           

    app.UseNCacheSession(); //store NCache session data            

    app.UseMvc(routes =>
    {
        routes.MapRoute(
            name: "default",
            template: "{controller=myApp}/{action=Index}/{id?}");
    });
}

You can now proceed to use NCache as the underlying cache for your ASP.NET Core sessions.

Configuration Properties

The configuration options provided by NCache are explained below: