How can I disable session state in ASP.NET MVC?

Question

I would like to have a very lightweight ASP.NET MVC site which includes removing as many of the usual HttpModules as possible and disabling session state. However when I try to do this, I get the following error:

The SessionStateTempDataProvider requires SessionState to be enabled.

I've disabled session state in web.config:

<sessionState mode="Off" />

I understand that ASP.NET MVC uses session state for TempData, but I don't need/want TempData - I just want to disable session state. Help!

Answer 1

You could make your own ControllerFactory and DummyTempDataProvider. Something like this:

public class NoSessionControllerFactory : DefaultControllerFactory
{
  protected override IController GetControllerInstance(Type controllerType)
  {
    var controller = base.GetControllerInstance(controllerType);
    ((Controller) controller).TempDataProvider = new DummyTempDataProvider();
    return controller;
  }
}


public class DummyTempDataProvider : ITempDataProvider
{
  public IDictionary<string, object> LoadTempData(ControllerContext controllerContext)
  {
    return new Dictionary<string, object>();
  }

  public void SaveTempData(ControllerContext controllerContext, IDictionary<string, object> values)
  {
  }
}

And then you would just need to register the controller factory on app startup - e.g. you could do this in global.asax:

ControllerBuilder.Current.SetControllerFactory(new NoSessionControllerFactory());