Sharing variables in web methods

Question

Does anyone here know the proper way to share variables between webmethods in a web service. I seem to be doing something very wrong when i try with session or application variables. I need to take a variable passed in by one webmethod and pass it into another to be used. Thanks for any help

spgilmore · Answer

So these are two different web requests between which you want data to persist? Since the web is stateless and the client is not I usually require the client to maintain any information that will need to be persisted between webmethods. Data that is returned from one webmethod can be kept on the client and passed as a parameter to the next webmethod. Another method is to use a database to maintain these. You don't always know when a session is maintained. You may want data to persist for days. This requires the extra step of cleaning up stagnant data. You can use sessions as you've already tried... they should work most of the time. You can also use cookies but the user may prohibit this. If this is not user-specific and you're not running a webfarm you can also use the cache.