View state in Asp.Net

In this post we will discuss about view state in Asp.Net.

Also you can check my previous posts on:

- Session management in Asp.Net

- Advantages of WCF in Asp.Net

- WPF Tutorial in Asp.Net-Windows Presentation Foundation

- View state is one of the popular and simple state management technique.

- View state uses a hidden field that ASP.NET automatically inserts in the final, rendered HTML of a web page.

- It is very much helpful to store information that is used for multiple postbacks in a single web page.

- We can enable and disable view state at control level as well as page level.

You can use the EnableViewState= "True/False"; to enable or disable viewstate for control level or page level.

- Example to store value:
ViewState["UserName"] = "AspDotNetHelp";

To retrive the value we can write like this:

string currentUserName = ViewState["UserName"].ToString();

But the view state data is not secure, because Asp.Net uses a Base64 string.

- But if your view state data contains secret data then you can encrypt that data by using

ViewStateEncryptionMode property at page level or application level like below:

Page Level:
<%@Page ViewStateEncryptionMode="Always" %>

Website level:
<configuration>
<system.web>
<pages viewStateEncryptionMode="Always" />
</system.web>
</configuration>