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I have ASP 4.5 website with a dependency on the business logic project, which is a class library built using .Net v4.5. Recently to expand the development, I have planned to introduce additional website project which is ASP Core. For the same, I have added the dependency of the business logic project. The business logic currently evaluates the request, cookies and session related stuff through HttpContext.Current instance. Which isn't working when I am accessing the business logic through ASP Core website.

Access HttpContext.Current

I have gone through the above question, and can know that why HttpContext.Current appears as null when I access it through ASP Core. And the answer to it suggests to populate the reference type IHttpContextAccessor through dependency injection. Now, the problem is, this interface belongs to the library Microsoft.AspNet.Http, and I don't see a way to add this to my business logic project.

Someone please help me out to access HttpContext into my business logic project.

Community
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Mukesh Bhojwani
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2 Answers2

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I had this exact same need. The way I solved it was to create my own interfaces that live in my class library and I use those to get access to the current HttpContext regardless of whether the library is running under a 4.5 http context or a MVC Core http context.

To explain further, both the ASP 4.5 framework and the ASP Core Framework have an HttpContext object with associated Request and Response objects but they are defined in different namespaces and neither framework knows about the other framework's namespace. So What I decided is that I needed my library code to have access to an IHttpContext that was defined in one of my namespaces. And that IHttpContext would use an IHttpRequest and IHttpResponse that were also defined in my library's namespace. And finally, that IHttpRequest uses ISession, IHeaders and ICookies that are defined in my namespace.

With these interfaces defined, in my ASP 4.5 website I can now at the web layer create an HttpContext class based on my IHttpContext and have that class basically wrap the ASP 4.5 HttpContext object. My HttpContext object could then be passed into my library for use.

And in my MVC Core website I can now at the web layer create an HttpContext class based on my IHttpContext and have that class basically wrap the MVC Core HttpContext object. My HttpContext object could then be passed into my library for use just like it was when I was running under the ASP 4.5 environment.

So in the end, my library doesn't know which HttpContext object (4.5 or Core) it is actually accessing under the hood because it just knows that the object is has access to confirms to the IHttpInterface defined in it's library.

One final note, to help navigate name conflicts, I actually named my interfaces this way:

IAppHttpContext
IAppHttpRequest
IAppHttpResponse
IAppHttpSession
IAppHttpRequestHeaders
IAppHttpRequestCookies

Note that not all the functionality that is available in HttpContext 4.5 is available in MVC Core. The two are very similar but there are a few differences. The biggest difference is that MVC Core Session can only store byte arrays or strings whereas 4.5 session can store objects. So my IAppSession only supports storing byte arrays and strings and I have to make sure all my library's session needs work with that (all the objects that I need to store in session need to be serializable).

As you can imagine, implementing this is a bit of work, but in the end you will have a library that can access HttpContext and not care if it's running under a 4.5 HttpContext or a MVC Core HttpContext. Kinda neat.

Good luck.

RonC
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  • Thank you so much for taking out your time to share a working solution. Also kudos for your knowledge. – Mukesh Bhojwani May 20 '16 at 09:34
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    @Ron C - Just to add my thanks for this answer. In my case I only (currently!) need access to the SessionId in my library (which is reused by an ASP.NET Webforms project, and now also ASP.NET Core site), so my interface and the wrapper classes were very simple, but I seem to have it working, and I'm grateful for your explanation! – ChrisA Apr 26 '20 at 12:52
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i too had this same problem. I solved it by adding following dependency in my project.json file to add the http packages to class library

"Microsoft.AspNetCore.Http.Abstractions": "1.1.0"

then i used it like below

public class sampleclass
{
   private readonly IHttpContextAccessor context;

   public ISession GetSession()
   {
     return context.HttpContext.Session;
   }
}

Thank you. Happy Coding :-)

Reference : http://benjii.me/2016/07/using-sessions-and-httpcontext-in-aspnetcore-and-mvc-core/

Kabilan Smart
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