ASP in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Name

SessionID — Session.SessionID

Synopsis

A read-only value that uniquely identifies each current user's session. This value is of data type Long and is stored as a cookie on the client machine. During a user's session, the user's browser sends this cookie to the web server as a means of identifying the user.

Parameters

None

Example

<%

' The following code retrieves the current SessionID for
' a given user:

Dim lngUserSessionId

lngUserSessionId = Session.SessionID

%>

Notes

The SessionID property is generated the first time a user requests a page from the web server. The web server creates a value for the SessionID property using a complex algorithm and then stores this value in the form of a cookie on the user's machine. Subsequently, each time the user requests a page from the web server, this cookie is sent to the server in the HTTP request header. The server is then able to identify the user according to her SessionID. The cookie is reinitialized only when the client restarts her browser or when the webmaster restarts the web server.

Note that the SessionID cookie lasts on the client browser and is sent to (and recognized by) the web server until one of the two machines (client or web server) is restarted. This time period has nothing to do with the Timeout property of the Session object. For example, assume a user's session ends or is abandoned by using the Abandon method of the Session object. Then the user (without having restarted her browser) revisits the site. Assuming also ...