Extending Forms Authentication Timeout When Making AJAX Calls With jQuery

Question

I'm looking to rewrite a pretty intensive CRUD type ASP.NET page to utilize ajax calls (specifically jQuery ajax). My concern in doing this is that the user may be on this page longer than the forms authentication timeout. Because of this, I'm thinking that I should extend the forms authentication ticket with each ajax call (basically how it does in a normal web forms submit model). So the questions:

Is this even a valid concern? If so, would writing a jQuery plugin to extend the forms authentication timeout be possible? Does one already exist? Would using ASP.NET AJAX be a better approach?

Any comments\help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

You should be able to use MS Ajax without the Script manager and use jQuery to consume the WebMethods. More info doing so here

As far as I know, calling a WebMethod will extend the user's session timeout. So this approach may be a best of both worlds.

Answer 2

I can confirm that making a web service or page method call through jQuery will extend an ASP.NET session expiration in the same way that a regular postback will.

I often use a five minute setInterval() to call a "keep-alive" service, which will preserve the user's session indefinitely even if they leave the application idle.