ASP.NET MVC session using jQuery

PROBLEM SOLUTION: I didn’t notice a very simple problem, and it is that there are actually two different applications running under the same website. I slightly changed the url in the AJAX call to reflect this and the problem no longer happens.

ORIGINAL QUESTION:

I have a strange problem and I hope someone can help shed some light on the situation.

I have a page, your standard shopping cart, where I am trying to get a promo code to work via AJAX. Everything works fine except for my session state. When I first load the shopping cart page, I look at the cart in the session (if not, I mock it as I am just templating / checking things right now) and right before I go back, I save the cart to go back to the session ... I am doing the same in my AJAX action which returns a partial view.

Here's the problem:

It seems that two different versions of the cart are being returned from the session, depending on what action I am going to do, which of course is not what I want.

This is how I can tell there is a problem:

• First, I load the page by unloading the cart into the session.
• Load the page to check if the telegram was saved correctly in the session.
• Enter the promo code, the breakpoint in the basket search process does not show the telegram in the session.
• The mock cart is saved per session again, this time with the discount applied.
• Reload the page again, the cart is retrieved from the session, but this is the first cart I saved.
• Re-enter the promo code, this time it will find the cart in the session, but the one who already has the discount.
• Then I repeat this process several times to double check my sanity, but what I have described happens very often when I describe it.

So now I am very confused and frustrated as this is the only thing on my way at the moment. I hope this is something simple that I am missing, but searching for this problem (here and Google) gives me results covering a very wide range of topics.

EDIT: For the request, below is the code to save / retrieve the cart:

private void SaveCart(ShoppingCartContainer cart)
{
    Session["Cart"] = cart;
}

private ShoppingCartContainer RetrieveCart()
{
    ShoppingCartContainer cart = (ShoppingCartContainer)Session["Cart"];
    if (cart != null)
    {
        return cart;
    }
    return null;
}

      

        
        
        
      

    

EDIT: Following are the action methods

public ActionResult ListItems(string userid)
{
    var retval = RetriveCart();
    if( retval == null)
    {
        retval = _model.Show(userid);
        if (retval == null)
        {
            return Redirect("/");
        }
    }
    SaveCart(retval);
    return View("List", retval);
}

public ActionResult ApplyPromoCode(string promocode, string userid)
{
    var cart = RetriveCart();
    if (cart == null)
    {
        cart = _model.Show("blah");
    }
    cart = _model.ApplyPromoCode(promocode, "blah");
    SaveCart(cart);
    if (Request.IsAjaxRequest())
    {
        return PartialView("ShoppingCartFooter", cart);
    }
    return RedirectToAction("ListItems", new { userid = "blah" });
}

      

        
        
        
      

    

NOTE. As I said, I'm doing templating / testing, so some of the code between Get and Store calls might be a little pointless. I have more or less posed this as a problem, however, as the problem occurs before I even get to them.

UPDATE: Further confirmation of my suspicions of what's going on is that when I just submit the form without jQuery, hijacking the submit form, the cart will be saved properly so that when I load the page normally the promo code stays applied.

UPDATE # 2: Just looked at what happens on the first AJAX call. It looks like the session variable has the "IsNewSession" property set in a new one on the first AJAX call, although I already got started when I arrived at the page. I cannot explain why this is happening, but there is additional information here that may be relevant:

We are using the Windsor factory controller ("we" I don't mean me, I just hook the templates to the views and do enough code in the background to get the thread to work as expected) m unfamiliar with it, but could this be part of Problems?