How to persist a dropdown selected value used in Master page to all content pages in asp.net

Question

I am designing a Job Portal. I have Master Page and in Master Page, I have used a Select Country Dropdown List.

I am displaying jobs based on user selected country in all content pages.

I just want that a user only selects one time a country and it remain selected through out all content pages. I don't want him select again and again on every content page.

I just want to persist the dropdown selected value through out the navigating in website unless user changes it again.

Answer 1

You can use a Session to store the value of the DropDownList

<asp:DropDownList ID="DropDownList1" runat="server" AutoPostBack="true" OnSelectedIndexChanged="DropDownList1_SelectedIndexChanged">
    <asp:ListItem Text="Netherlands" Value="nl-NL"></asp:ListItem>
    <asp:ListItem Text="England" Value="en-GB"></asp:ListItem>
    <asp:ListItem Text="Germany" Value="de-DE"></asp:ListItem>
</asp:DropDownList>

Code behind, set the correct value of the dropdown on every page load. And you can now use the value of Session["language"] to filter your data.

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    if (!IsPostBack)
    {
        //check if the session exists and select the correct value in the dropdownlist
        if (Session["language"] != null)
        {
            DropDownList1.SelectedValue = Session["language"].ToString();
        }
        else
        {
            //set the session with the default language
            Session["language"] = "en-GB";
        }
    }
}

protected void DropDownList1_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    //set the session based on the dropdownlist value
    Session["language"] = DropDownList1.SelectedValue;
}

Answer 2

It depends on your implementation of Master Page and Content Pages but one was it to use cookies or user profile to save user preferences for country selection. Your master page can then read this data (from cookies or profile) to show the selection.

In the end, I think you want to persist the user choice somewhere that is accessible to all pages during the navigation. Master Page and Content Pages are just a mechanism to read this information.