Access Viewstate across pages in ASP.NET

“Is it possible to access the ViewState variable of one page on another page?”

My answer was “No” . Because i have read in books that Viewstate is page specific, it is available only on the same page on which it was created.Once you redirect to another page, the previous page’s viewstate is no longer accessible.

But that is not true. Yes, we can access the viewstate variables across pages. This is only possible if Cross Page Posting or Server.transfer is used to redirect the user to other page. If Response.redirect is used, then ViewState cannot be accessed across pages.

Let us create one sample application to understand this.

Step 1 : Create two page one.aspx & two.aspx

Step 2 : Code for one.aspx.cs

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    ViewState["Page1"] = "Page1 ViewState";
    Server.Transfer("two.aspx");
}

public StateBag ReturnViewState()
{
    return ViewState;
}

As you can see, I have set a ViewState variable in Page Load and transfer the user to two.aspx page using the Server.transfer() method. This page also contains a method ReturnViewState() which actually returns the ViewState of this page to the calling function. The return type of the method is StateBag class.

StateBag class: This class is the primary storage mechanism for all HTML and Web server controls. It stores attribute/value pairs as strings associated with the control. It tracks changes to these attributes only after the OnInit method is executed for a page request, and saves the changes to the page’s or control’s viewstate.

Step 3 : Code for two.aspx.cs


private StateBag PreviousPageViewState
{
    get
    {
        StateBag returnValue = null;
        if (PreviousPage != null)
        {
            Object objPreviousPage = (Object)PreviousPage;
            MethodInfo objMethod = objPreviousPage.GetType().GetMethod
  ("ReturnViewState");
            return (StateBag)objMethod.Invoke(objPreviousPage, null);
        }
        return returnValue;
    }
}

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    if (PreviousPage != null)
    {
        if (PreviousPageViewState != null)
        {
            Label1.Text = PreviousPageViewState["Page1"].ToString();
        }
    }
}





Whenever we use Server.transfer or Cross Page Posting, We can get the previous page object via PreviousPage property. Using Previous Page, we can find the controls of the previous page. For example, one can access Label control placed in ViewStateContainer Page in current Page.

Looking at the code, I have created a PreviousPageViewState property in this page, which returns the previous page’s ViewState. It first checks whether PreviousPage is null or not, if it’s not null, then it creates an object of the previous page.

Now using Reflection, we can invoke the method of the previous class. Using MethodInfo class, I have invoked the ReturnViewState() method of ViewStateContainer Page.

In Page_Load event, I am able to access the ViewState variable of ViewStateContainer Page. You can access all the viewstate variables set in ViewStateContainer Page.

Step 4: Run the application & see the effect




A Tip While Using ViewState

View state maintains data in a page across postbacks. And this data passes in form of hidden field data. There is a certain limitation of this hidden field. If your hidden field will be greater than that specified value, then sometimes firewalls and proxy servers refuse to let your data passes through. And in that case you have to disable your view state .This might cause many problem if you want your data to be passed.

So to overcome this problem you can do viewstate chunking. This is a process of splitting the data into multiple chunks and putting them into multiple hidden fields, So that there will not be any problem to your data to pass through. This chunking is done by  adding “MaxPageStateFieldLength” property in the page tag in web.config file. The default value is -1 which indicates there is no maximum limit of data. You have to give the integer value which indicates the maximum bytes size for a viewstate field.