TIWServerController's SessionTimeout property defines the time of inactivity,
in minutes, after which a session is automatically destroyed.
There are at least two problems with this approach:
-
When a user stops working with your application for a period longer than the timeout,
and then returns to the application (for instance, after a lengthy phone call),
the browser will happily display Intraweb's timeout screen.
You can restart the application, but now all session specific, non-persisted data, is lost...
-
So you set a longer timeout, let's say, an hour. This doesn't solve the problem above, really,
it only makes it less probable. On the other hand, if the user closes the browser window
without explicitly closing Intraweb's session (without logging out or performing a similar action),
an "active" session is left hanging in Intraweb for the period specified in SessionTimeout.
This takes up resources, obviously, but more importantly, may also delay saving user's data
(until, for instance, the session is destroyed by Intraweb).
In applications where sessions take up a lot of memory, or use other resources,
you can quickly run out of those resources if you have a lot of visitors
whose session are left dangling...
Thus, the following solution
(based on a comment here):
- Set the SessionTimeout to 1 minute.
- Add a TIWTimer component to your forms (I use a base form for that).
- Set the OnAsyncTimer event to an empty handler.
- Set the timer's interval to 20 seconds or so.
This solves problem #1 - the user, as long as he/she has a browser window open, will not get a timeout message.
This helps with problem #2 - the longest period that an active session will not be destroyed is... 1 minute.
The 20 second interval in the timer ensures that a timer will refresh the session 2 to 3 times per minute
(modulo networking problems).
Note that each such call sends data to the server, about 2kB worth.
So you may need to balance the timeout period with the timer's interval a bit, if that starts to be a problem.
And in case of networking problems, you may leave the timer's interval, but raise the session timeout to several minutes.
type
TYIWForm = class(TIWAppForm)
HeartbeatTimer: TIWTimer;
procedure HeartbeatTimerAsyncTimer(ASender: TObject; AEventParams: TStringList);
end;
. . .
procedure TYIWForm.HeartbeatTimerAsyncTimer(ASender: TObject; AEventParams: TStringList);
begin
// Don't do anything,
// but don't let Delphi's IDE remove this method automatically.
end;
It doesn't get any simpler than that... :-)
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