Flippant Remarks about ASP.NET HTTP Context

What I notice about ASP.NET HttpContext:

• The ApplicationInstance property has some of the events that have seemed to me to appear from nowhere in Global.asax.cs—by the way, Application_Start is not there—what is there are a bunch of authentication events (leading me quite ‘naturally’ to the subject of authentication).

• For the Items collection, the MSDN documentation explains that the collection “…can be used to organize and share data between an IHttpModule interface and an IHttpHandler interface during an HTTP request…” My opinion: this collection is meant to be used for Module programming—not for passing object-boxed data between pages (especially when these data can be accessed with the Page.PreviousPage property).

• The Profile property sitting in HTTP Context helps me distinguish between Profiles and Membership—it’s the Membership processes that result in User Profile data.

• The Cache property refers to the second type of out-of-the-box ASP.NET caching, application data caching (output caching, by the way, is the first). Based on my current level of experience with the innards of ASP.NET I assume that the Cache property is still useful when more advanced distributed caching solutions, like Velocity, are in use.### Related Links

• “How To: Use Membership in ASP.NET 2.0”

• “Profiles In ASP.NET 2.0”

• “ASP.NET 2.0 Membership, Roles, Forms Authentication, and Security Resources”

• “Examining ASP.NET’s Membership, Roles, and Profile”

• “HttpRuntime.Cache vs. HttpContext.Current.Cache”

• “Caching Application Data”

• “The ASP.NET HTTP Runtime”

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