HttpApplicationState not available in an MVC controller

Question

I'm using MVC2 and VS2010 developing a website and need to use Application State global values. I can set a value like 'Application["hits"]=0;' in Global.asax but when trying to use the same in an MVC controller always get the following error:

The name 'Application' does not exist in the current context

I have also tried using in the Global.asax in order to define a global variable but it triggers the following error:

A namespace cannot directly contain members such as fields or methods

I'm looking for a way to define global Application State values that are available within all controllers of my MVC2 web application. Am I omitting something? My controller looks like this:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Mvc;

namespace MVCApplication.Controllers
{
    [HandleError]
    public class HomeController : Controller
    {
        public ActionResult Index()
        {
            Application["hits"] += 1;

            ViewData["Message"] = "Welcome to ASP.NET MVC!";
            return View();
        }

    }
}

I appreciate any solutions and/or suggestions.

Thanks Mehrdad

Answer 1

I think that in MVC3 you can get access to an actual HttpApplicationState object via the

HttpContext.ApplicationInstance

property. That is:

HttpApplicationState application = HttpContext.ApplicationInstance.Application