Can OWIN middleware use the http session?

Question

I had a little bit of code that I was duplicating for ASP.NET and SignalR and I decided to rewrite it as OWIN middleware to remove this duplication.

Once I was running it I noticed that HttpContext.Current.Session was null, and I didn't see any session object on the IOwinContext that my middleware has.

Is it possible to access the http session from OWIN?

Answer 1

Yes, but it's quite a hack. It also won't work with SignalR because SignalR MUST run before session is acquired to prevent long session locks.

Do this to enable session for any request:

public static class AspNetSessionExtensions
{
    public static IAppBuilder RequireAspNetSession(this IAppBuilder app)
    {
        app.Use((context, next) =>
        {
            // Depending on the handler the request gets mapped to, session might not be enabled. Force it on.
            HttpContextBase httpContext = context.Get<HttpContextBase>(typeof(HttpContextBase).FullName);
            httpContext.SetSessionStateBehavior(SessionStateBehavior.Required);
            return next();
        });
        // SetSessionStateBehavior must be called before AcquireState
        app.UseStageMarker(PipelineStage.MapHandler);
        return app;
    }
}

Then you can access the session with either HttpContext.Current.Session or

HttpContextBase httpContext = context.Get<HttpContextBase>(typeof(HttpContextBase).FullName);