Application_Start, Application_End & Session_End

>>Applicaton_end - when the last user's session's times out => No: Application_End event is fired when the web site is stopped or IIS is reset

>>Does closing the browser invoke the Session_End? => No
>>If the last user closes the browser does it invoke Application_End? => No

>>I have a web application where I need to clean up some temp files in a particular directory, I need to do that when the session ends or when the application ends.
>>The users access this website from 9 -5, so will the application end event always be invoked if there is no activity past the last session timeout.?

I recommend you this using an ASPX page and call this page using Windows Task Schedular once a day at a specific time. Another option would be to place code in Session_Start event to delete files that are older than one day.


>>Will the application start event fire the next day when the users hit the website again? please note that I don't intend to start and stop IIS everyday => No

HTH, Nauman.

Thanks, so Session_End will only be invoked when the user's session time's out, meaning he is logged on for the timeout period with no activity.

Yes, Session_End is only invoked when the session is timed out or you call Session.Abandon from your code.

--Nauman.

Nauman,

Thanks for your help

This is what I came up with in my Session_Start and Session_End. In Session_Start i delete all files that are not equal to current date
In Session_End i delete user specific session file.
I tested this, and you are right that when I close the browser the session_end is not invoked as my file is not deleted.

       // Code that runs when a new session is started
        try
        {
            FileSystemObject fso = new FileSystemObject();
            string path = Server.MapPath(".");
            path = path + "\\PDFFiles";
            if (fso.FolderExists(path))
            {
                //delete each file in the folder, do not delete the folder as this would remove the folder privileges
                DirectoryInfo dirInfo = new DirectoryInfo(path);

                foreach (FileInfo f in dirInfo.GetFiles())
                {
                    if ((f.Extension.Equals(".pdf")) && ((f.CreationTime.ToShortDateString()) != (DateTime.Now.ToShortDateString())))
                    {
                       
                        f.Delete();
                    }

                }
            }


        }

        // Code that runs when a session ends.
        // Note: The Session_End event is raised only when the sessionstate mode
        // is set to InProc in the Web.config file. If session mode is set to StateServer
        // or SQLServer, the event is not raised.

        try
        {
            FileSystemObject fso = new FileSystemObject();
            string strFile = Session.SessionID.ToString() + ".pdf";
            string path = Server.MapPath(".");
            path = path + "\\PDFFiles";
            string pdf = path + "\\" + strFile;
            fso.GetFile(pdf);
            fso.DeleteFile(pdf, true);


        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        { }