Session Expiration

If the user session ends when the session cookie expires without explicitly triggering logout, there is most likely a need to clean up the server-side session data. To remove these expired records, there is an automatic cleanup mechanism that periodically scans for expired sessions. When these records are cleaned up, you can optionally notify the client that the session has ended via back-channel logout.

Expiration Configuration

The expiration configuration features can be configured with the server-side session options. It is enabled by default, but if you wish to disable it or change how often IdentityServer will check for expired sessions, you can.

For example, to change the interval:

Program.cs

builder.Services.AddIdentityServer(options => {
    options.ServerSideSessions.RemoveExpiredSessionsFrequency = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(60);
})
    .AddServerSideSessions();

To disable:

Program.cs

builder.Services.AddIdentityServer(options => {
    options.ServerSideSessions.RemoveExpiredSessions = false;
})
    .AddServerSideSessions();

Back-channel Logout

When the session cleanup job removes expired records, it will by default also trigger back-channel logout notifications to client applications participating in the session. You can use this mechanism to create an inactivity timeout that applies across all your client applications.

The ServerSideSessions.ExpiredSessionsTriggerBackchannelLogout flag enables this behavior, and it is on by default.

Configuring Server-Side Session Lifetime

If you need to change the default lifetime of server-side sessions, there are two ways to do so, depending on whether you’re using ASP.NET Core Identity or not.

Default behavior

The default session lifetime of 10 hours is inherited from the IdentityServerOptions.Authentication.CookieLifetime property. When configuring IdentityServer, you can override this default:

builder.Services.AddIdentityServer(options => {
  options.Authentication.CookieLifetime = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(42);
});

ASP.NET Core Identity

When using ASP.NET Core Identity, the server-side session follows the lifetime of ASP.NET Core Identity’s session cookie, which is 14 days by default. To change the lifetime, you need to reconfigure the application cookie using the ConfigureApplicationCookie extension method:

builder.Services.ConfigureApplicationCookie(options => {
  options.ExpireTimeSpan = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(42);
});