Server Timeout

[Rick Farris]

Greetings,

I apologize if this is not the right forum for this question. If so,
kindly point me in the right direction and I'll not bother you further.

I have a problem with sessions timing out while a student is taking a
test. This is a really bad thing, because the session times out and
then the student completes the test, but his answers aren't saved
because the server no longer knows who he is.

I know that if I lag too long at my bank website a window pops up and
tells me that I'm about to time out and to press a key if I want to
continue.

Can someone give me any suggestions for how to handle this situation?

I'm using IIS5 with ASP 3.

Thank you,

-- Rick

 

[Tom B]

I'm sure I read a post about this recently.

Anyway, set your timeout to a high number, then write a client-side script
which pops up an alert box 1 minute before the session timeout.
Or, have your client side code ask for something from the server repeatedly,
to keep the session alive.
Or, use a cookie instead of sessions.....that is-> if the session value
isn't there, read the cookie to determine who the user is, then set the
Session variables again.

Just a couple of suggestions.

 

[Rick Farris]

Or, use a cookie instead of sessions.....

I just had a minor epiphany about this. I was looking something up on
Safari Bookshelf (http://safari.oreilly.com) and when I pushed the
submit key, it took longer than normal. At that point I realized that I
hadn't used that browser in several hours and that Safari must have
timed me out.

Then came the epiphany. Safari had stored a cookie in my browser and
had retrieved it to see who I am. Damn that's a good idea!

Thanks,

-- Rick