How to share same data one action method to other action method in ASP.NET MVC - asp.net-mvc

Question

When i call my admin controller- Index Action method will get all the user details
when i want select particular user again i dont want to hit the DB.
both action method same controller and i'm using model popup for display details.
My Question
I dont want to use entity framework.
- when admin form load i will get all the user details this is Index Action Method
-based on user id i need to display particular user so again i dont want hit to the DB already i'm having all the user details. that details how to get another action method?
i can remember asp.net i used session to share the data globally. like that asp.net mvc is possible? please help me.
Thanks

Answer 1

It looks you're looking for a cache mechanism. For simple scenarios, I use a simple static variable, but I keep it in a separated class. Let's suppose you have a User class like this:
public class User
{
public string Id { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
}
You could create a class like this:
public static class UserCacheService
{
private static IEnumerable<User> _users;
private static readonly object lockObj = new object();
public static IEnumerable<User> GetUsers()
{
lock (lockObj)
{
if (_users == null)
{
using (var db = new MyNiceDbContext())
{
_users = db.Users.ToList();
}
}
return _users;
}
}
public static void InvalidateCache()
{
lock (lockObj)
{
_users = null;
}
}
}
Then you can get your shared users in any action, of any controller like this:
public class AdminController : Controller
{
public ActionResult Index()
{
// the first time, it'll need to get users from DB (e.g with Entity Framework)
var users = UserCacheService.GetUsers();
return View();
}
}
The first time, the _users in your UserCacheService will be null, and as expected, it'll need to load users from database. However, the next time it won't, no matter if you are using another controller:
public class AnotherController : Controller
{
public ActionResult Index(string userId)
{
// now, it won't load from DB anymore, because _users is already populated...
var users = UserCacheService.GetUsers();
var currentUser = users.Where(u => u.Id == userId).FirstOrDefault();
if (currentUser != null)
{
// do something with the user...
}
return View();
}
}
There are times when unfortunately your _users will become null again, for example when you restart your ApplicationPool in IIS, but UserCacheService is already prepared for fetching database once if that's the case.
Be careful about three things:
Whenever you keep data in memory (like _users), you are consuming
your server's memory, which might be limited. Don't start trying to
keep everything in memory, only data you know you'll need everytime.
Whenever you update something in your users, like a name, an address or something else, since the _users will not get from database everytime, you need to call the UserCacheService.InvalidateCache() method, in order to force the next call to load again from database, thus making sure you have _users up to date.
This only works for simplistic scenarios. If you have your application distributed in two or more servers, this won't work, as each server has it's own memory and they can't share it out of the box. That's when you would look forward for something like Redis. Though, I don't think it's your case here.