Losing value of static variable declared in Globa.asax and initialized in onstart event of webrole

Question

Hi all,

I have declared a static string "drivePath" in Gloabal.asax.cs. In Onstart event of webrole I am assigning a value to it. I am accessing this value on my web page but it shows as if the variable is just declared. The value I get for the My code is as follows

Global .asax.cs

public static string drivePath = string.Empty;

WebRole.cs

public override bool OnStart()
{
       MountAzureDrive();
       Global.drivePath = WebRole.drivePath;
       return base.OnStart();
}

I am assigning value to WebRole.drivePath in "MountAzureDrive()" function.

On Web Page

On the web page in some function I am accessing the drivePath as "Global.drivePath"and I am getting value as string.Empty.

My question is Why is not preserving the value of drive path? What do I have to here if I want to preserve the value of drivepath and get it?

Please help me

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Hi BhimrajG,

The code running in the WebRole is not the same process as your web application (Global.asax.cs). What you could do is the following:

• WebRole: Mount the drive
• WebRole: Store the drive letter as an environment variable
• Global.asax.cs: Read the drive letter from the environment variable.
• ...

Follow this article for more information: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/81413/Windows-Azure-Drives-Part-1-Configure-and-Mounting 

Sandrino

---

Sandrino Di Mattia | Twitter: http://twitter.com/sandrinodm | Azure Blog: http://fabriccontroller.net/blog | Blog: http://sandrinodimattia.net/blog

Answer 2

OnStart (Role) is in another process than your web page (pages, Global.asax ..). At least when using Full IIS Mode

So I implemented/moved the code of mounting azure drive from onstart event of WebRole to Application_start event of Global.asax.cs file and it worked.

After this implementation for testing you need to restart your emulator.