Server.Transfer Vs. Response.Redirect

Question

What is difference between Server.Transfer and Response.Redirect?

• What are advantages and disadvantages of each?
• When is one appropriate over the other?
• When is one not appropriate?

Answer 1

Server.Transfer doesn't change the URL in the client browser, so effectively the browser does not know you changed to another server-side handler. Response.Redirect tells the browser to move to a different page, so the url in the titlebar changes.

Server.Transfer is slightly faster since it avoids one roundtrip to the server, but the non-change of url may be either good or bad for you, depending on what you're trying to do.

Answer 2

To be Short: Response.Redirect simply tells the browser to visit another page. Server.Transfer helps reduce server requests, keeps the URL the same and, with a little bug-bashing, allows you to transfer the query string and form variables.

Something I found and agree with (source):

Server.Transfer is similar in that it sends the user to another page with a statement such as Server.Transfer("WebForm2.aspx"). However, the statement has a number of distinct advantages and disadvantages.

Firstly, transferring to another page using Server.Transfer conserves server resources. Instead of telling the browser to redirect, it simply changes the "focus" on the Web server and transfers the request. This means you don't get quite as many HTTP requests coming through, which therefore eases the pressure on your Web server and makes your applications run faster.

But watch out: because the "transfer" process can work on only those sites running on the server; you can't use Server.Transfer to send the user to an external site. Only Response.Redirect can do that.

Secondly, Server.Transfer maintains the original URL in the browser. This can really help streamline data entry techniques, although it may make for confusion when debugging.

That's not all: The Server.Transfer method also has a second parameter—"preserveForm". If you set this to True, using a statement such as Server.Transfer("WebForm2.aspx", True), the existing query string and any form variables will still be available to the page you are transferring to.

For example, if your WebForm1.aspx has a TextBox control called TextBox1 and you transferred to WebForm2.aspx with the preserveForm parameter set to True, you'd be able to retrieve the value of the original page TextBox control by referencing Request.Form("TextBox1").

Answer 3

The beauty of Server.Transfer is what you can do with it:

TextBox myTxt = (TextBox)this.Page.PreviousPage.FindControl("TextBoxID");

You can get anything from your previous page using the above method as long as you use Server.Transfer but not Response.Redirect

Answer 4

Transfer is entirely server-side. Client address bar stays constant. Some complexity about the transfer of context between requests. Flushing and restarting page handlers can be expensive so do your transfer early in the pipeline e.g. in an HttpModule during BeginRequest. Read the MSDN docs carefully, and test and understand the new values of HttpContext.Request - especially in Postback scenarios. We usually use Server.Transfer for error scenarios.

Redirect terminates the request with a 302 status and client-side roundtrip response with and internally eats an exception (minor server perf hit - depends how many you do a day) Client then navigates to new address. Browser address bar & history updates etc. Client pays the cost of an extra roundtrip - cost varies depending on latency. In our business we redirect a lot we wrote our own module to avoid the exception cost.

Answer 5

Response.Redirect: tells the browser that the requested page can be found at a new location. The browser then initiates another request to the new page loading its contents in the browser. This results in two requests by the browser.

Server.Transfer: It transfers execution from the first page to the second page on the server. As far as the browser client is concerned, it made one request and the initial page is the one responding with content. The benefit of this approach is one less round trip to the server from the client browser. Also, any posted form variables and query string parameters are available to the second page as well.

Answer 6

Response.Redirect redirects page to another page after first page arrives to client. So client knows the redirection.

Server.Transfer quits current execution of the page. Client does not know the redirection. It allows you to transfer the query string and form variables.

So it depends to your needs to choose which is better.