Checking session if empty or not

You need to check that Session["emp_num"] is not null before trying to convert it to a string otherwise you will get a null reference exception.

I'd go with your first example - but you could make it slightly more "elegant".

There are a couple of ways, but the ones that springs to mind are:

if (Session["emp_num"] is string)
{
}

or

if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(Session["emp_num"] as string))
{
}

This will return null if the variable doesn't exist or isn't a string.


You should first check if Session["emp_num"] exists in the session.

You can ask the session object if its indexer has the emp_num value or use string.IsNullOrEmpty(Session["emp_num"])


Use this if the session variable emp_num will store a string:

 if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(Session["emp_num"] as string))
 {
                //The code
 }

If it doesn't store a string, but some other type, you should just check for null before accessing the value, as in your second example.


if (HttpContext.Current.Session["emp_num"] != null)
{
     // code if session is not null
}
  • if at all above fails.