I am trying to implement something in ASP.NET MVC where I can make each user perform an action once every n minutes.
I have come across controls such as Timer but, not quite sure what to use. I would like it so that when the user performs the action, a timer begins to count down from, for example, 3 minutes to 0:00. Once the 3 minutes have lapsed, the user will be able to perform the action again.
Any ideas how I can achieve this? Would I need a Timer Control?
There is a perfect solution here: Best way to implement request throttling in ASP.NET MVC? created by SO team.
Basically the idea is to store page hits for each user in the cache and then respond to a request based on your logic.
You could use jquery-timer http://code.google.com/p/jquery-timer/
Basic use would be disable button, invoke timer and then re-enable button when it completes.
However, if you want to post back in the interim this would not work.
The easiest way to do this would be to save the time of the last action in the session and on subsequent requests check whether it has been more than 3 minutes. For example:
public ActionResult DoSomething(){
if (Session["LastAction"] == null || (DateTime.Now - (DateTime)(Session["LastAction"])).Minutes > 3){
// do action
Session["LastAction"] = DateTime.Now;
return View("OK. action executed");
}
else{
return View("Please wait");
}
}
The most elegant way to achieve this is implementing a job scheduler like Quartz.NET and defining proper job (what has to be done) and proper trigger (when/how often has to be done). With Quartz you can also implement much more complex conditions ("do it every Monday" etc).
Hope it will help.
