url as parameters? in ASP.NET CORE - url

Is there a way to read url as parameters?
for example url could be:
downloadSomething.com/data/json/something
And the method:
[HttpGet]
public async Task<Data> Data(string type, string otherParameter)
{
...
I know it's not a good practice.. I just want to know if is it possible.
Thx for help :)

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking here. The way routing works by default would allow this particular example.
[HttpGet("data/{type}/{otherParameter}")]
If you're talking about actually taking part of the path as a param, you can use the catch-all param, but it must be last param in the route (as it will obviously swallow everything).
[HttpGet("data/{**stuff}")]
That would then set the param stuff with the full path: json/something.

Related

Specify HTTP VERB for Url.Action?

I am using AttributeRouting: http://attributerouting.net/
If I have two actions with the same name, but the route for the GET is different than the route for the POST, why is Url.Action generating a URL that matches on my GET action, even though my action method is pointing to the one that is a post?
I have tried passing the verb as an
Url.Action("CreateEdit", new { method = "POST" })
However this returns the string /enrollments/create instead of /enrollments/createedit which corresponds to the POST.
I wouldn't expect this to work but tried it as some route configurations use this technique:
Url.Action("CreateEdit", new { HttpMethodConstraint = new HttpMethodConstraint("POST") })
However both of these don't solve the problem, and the URL is still for my GET route.
I have verified that I can post to a hardcoded URL of /enrollments/createedit so the POST action does indeed have that route, just to rule out the possibility that the POST Action's default [POST] is defaulting to the expected route.
Problem is that I usually avoid hardcoded URL's and use Url.Action or Html.BeginForm (which also exhibits the same issue) so that all URLs are derived from action routes.
Here are how I have defined my actions:
[GET("create")]
[GET("edit/{id:guid?}")]
public ActionResult CreateEdit(Guid? id)
...
[POST] //default to "createedit"
public ActionResult CreateEdit()
...
Note this question is not about making the actual request, but is generating route urls.
How do you indicate to Url.Action that it should use the route from the [POST] instead of the GET. There is no overload that take constraints or HTTP Verb? Note that Html.BeginForm exhibits that same issue when generating the action URL attribute, which is clearly a POST oriented method.
It also does not work if I simplify my action routes to(although the above are my goal routes):
[GET("create")]
public ActionResult CreateEdit()
...
[POST("createedit")] //default to "createedit"
public ActionResult CreateEdit()
...
Url.Action("CreateEdit", new { method = "POST" }) returns "/enrollments/create" obviously because method = 'POST' is not the correct way to specify the desired route for Url.Action. Is there a way to tell Url.Action or Html.BeginForm to specify that the POST route is desired? The method param of BeginForm effects the method="post" html attribute, but the action attribute is still generated with the wrong /enrollments/create URL. I've seen area="Admin" used to specify Areas in route parameters. Is there some magic property that can be added to specify the verb? If there is not, then clearly there is no way to get the right URL consistently and I will probably need to rename one of my actions if I need to maintain the desired routes. My hope was there was some route value I could add analogous to new { area = "SomeArea" }. method = "POST" was just my wild guess at what might work.
The request pipeline respects route constraints, if they are both the same route, then it works fine. So if both were [POST("creatededit")] and [GET("create"] then it would work fine because the URLs for both are the same, and then when the actual request is made the distinction is made by the pipeline due to the HttpMethodContraint.
If I use parameters to make the routes distinct, it works but only if I eliminate the [GET("create")]
If Url.Action has no known/supported/documented way to take a route property then the answer may simply be that Url.Action doesn't have any way for you to tell it the desired VERB.
If someone asks: Is there a way to specify the area for Url.Action?
The answer is simply: Url.Action("SomeAction", new { area ="SomeArea" })
The answer is not: muck around with your routes so you don't have two actions of the same name in different areas(or any number of other things that don't address the question).
The answer is not: You shouldn't have actions of the same name in different areas. (It might be a valid point, but it doesn't create a useful resource for others who are in a situation where they absolutely must generate a URL for a different area).
I don't understand what is so complicated about that.
I'm not asking how to make a POST request. I know how to do that, but I don't intend to hardcode URLs into my views. That turns into a maintenance nightmare.
I could change my routes if my boss wasn't so set on SOE. So I can't eliminate the [GET("create")] route.
I can resolve by renaming an action like so:
[GET("create")]
[GET("edit/{id:guid?}")]
public ActionResult CreateEdit(Guid? id)
...
[POST("createedit")]
public ActionResult CreateEditPost()
...
That is a bit dirty, but works. It still doesn't answer the question.
If there is a way to specify the VERB for Url.Action, I think the answer would be a useful resource. Maybe not to as many people as Url.Action("SomeAction", new { area ="SomeArea" }) but it would be documenting a feature of Url.Action that for me has been elusive. Maybe it doesn't support it. Perhaps I will need to delve into the source code.
I goofed in my original answer. I wasn't thinking it through really and probably answered too quickly. Here's what it boils down to:
Url.Action is tied pretty inherently to the controller/action style routing. When there's two matching actions (overloads where one is a GET version and the other is a POST), the URL should be the same, and so the GET or really first version is returned. See, AttributeRouting just sort of layers on by letting you customize the outward facing URL, but internally, Url.Action is simply trying to find a route that will get you to the requested action. Once it finds a match, it assumes that's good enough, and especially pre-MVC5, it should have been.
MVC5 introduced attribute routing as a first-class citizen, but from what I've seen, this edge case (where the GET and POST versions of the same action have different URLs and you want the POST version in particular) has not been covered.
That said, I see a couple of potential workarounds:
Use different action names. If your POST action is named something like CreateEditPost, then you can very easily do Url.Action("CreateEditPost") and get the right URL. Since your routes are not affected directly by the action name, it doesn't really matter what it's called.
Use named routes. If you name your routes, then you can use Url.RouteUrl instead and request exactly the route your want. For example:
[POST("createedit", RouteName = "CreateEditPost")]
public ActionResult CreateEdit()
{
...
}
Then:
#Url.RouteUrl("CreateEditPost")

URL Mapping prefix in Grails

Recently, I'm trying to migrating my application from CakePHP to Grails. So far it's been a smooth sailing, everything I can do with CakePHP, I can do it with much less code in Grails. However, I have one question :
In CakePHP, there's an URL Prefix feature that enables you to give prefix to a certain action url, for example, if I have these actions in my controller :
PostController
admin_add
admin_edit
admin_delete
I can simply access it from the URL :
mysite/admin/post/add
mysite/admin/post/edit/1
mysite/admin/post/delete/2
instead of:
mysite/post/admin_add
mysite/post/admin_edit/1
mysite/post/admin_delete/2
Is there anyway to do this in Grails, or at least alternative of doing this?
Grails URL Mappings documentation doesn't help you in this particular case (amra, next time try it yourself and post an answer only if it's any help). Daniel's solution was close, but wouldn't work, because:
the action part must be in a closure when created dynamically
all named parameters excluding "controller", "action" and "id" are accessible via the params object
A solution could look like this:
"/admin/$controller/$adminAction?/$param?"{
action = { "admin_${params.adminAction}" }
}
The key is NOT to name the parameter as "action", because it seems to be directly mapped to an action and can not be overriden.
I also tried a dynamic solution with generic prefixes and it seems to work as well:
"/$prefix/$controller/$adminAction?/$param?"{
action = { "${params.prefix}_${params.adminAction}" }
}
I didn't test it, but try this:
"mysite/$prefix/$controller/$method/$id?"{
action = "${prefix}_${method}"
}
It constructs the action name from the prefix and the method.
Just take a look on grails URL Mappings documentation part

What's the point for UpdateModel to take values from RouteData and QueryString?

I've asked here about how to remove RouteData and QueryString sources from ValueProvider. And this question came out:
When does the UpdateModel needs values from RouteData and QueryString? Why this is left as default feature? I see point to use RouteData and QueryString to call the correct controllers methods and provide parameters for them but not to update model. Or am I missing something?
Do you know some explanation for this?
Thank you.
I imagine it's for the same reason as making extra RouteValues show up in the querystring when you parse a route - to give the easiest possible default behaviour.
There are lots of cases where people prefer to use querystrings for their applications, so having this default behaviour would take some of the work out of trying to reconstruct models.
Any GET request. You would normally use the Querystring to, for example, present a page number or any filtering options. In some cases those might be relevant to your model.

ActionResult return to page that called it

I have a ActionLink, that calls my public ActionResult, and I would like it to return back to the page that it was called from, but how?
There are a couple of tricks that you can use for this.
The simplest is ...
return Redirect(HttpContext.Request.UrlReferrer.AbsoluteUri);
AbsoluteUri may not give you the exact path you are looking for, but UrlReferrer should have the imformation you are looking for. Redirect returns a subclass of ActionResult so it is a valid return value.
Another idea is to base the redirect location off of stored values. This is useful when you are going to make multiple requests before you want to redirect, such as when you validate a form and show validation issues on the first response. Another situation will be when the referrer is not a local site. In either case, your referrer won't be what you want it to and you will need to retrieve the correct location from somewhere else.
Specific implementations include using a hidden input field on your form, session state, pulling a descriminator value from your route data, or even just a more constant value like HttpContext.Request.ApplicationPath.
Good luck.
Keep in mind that due to the state-less nature of the web, your ActionResult isn't "called from" your ActionLink as much it is simply a url that the user-agent requested.
Because of this, the only real "built-in" way you can know where that user was coming from is by inspecting the http Request headers to see what the referring page was:
string referrer = Request.Headers["referer"];
You'd then be responsible for parsing out the Action method from this url, if you were going to call it directly. Be aware that this referrer may not be a link within your own site.

ASP.Net MVC - handling bad URL parameters

What's the best way to handle a visitor constructing their own URL and replacing what we expect to be an ID with anything they like?
For example:
ASP.Net MVC - handling bad URL parameters
But the user could just as easily replace the URL with:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/foo
I've thought of making every Controller Function parameter a String, and using Integer.TryParse() on them - if that passes then I have an ID and can continue, otherwise I can redirect the user to an Unknown / not-found or index View.
Stack Overflow handles it nicely, and I'd like to too - how do you do it, or what would you suggest?
Here's an example of a route like yours, with a constraint on the number:
routes.MapRoute(
"Question",
"questions/{questionID}",
new { controller = "StackOverflow", action = "Question" },
new { questionID = #"\d+" } //Regex constraint specifying that it must be a number.
);
Here we set the questionID to have at least one number. This will also block out any urls containing anything but an integer, and also prevents the need for a nullable int.
Note: This does not take into account numbers that larger than the range of Int32 (-2147483647 - +2147483647). I leave this as an exercise to the user to resolve. :)
If the user enters the url "questions/foo", they will not hit the Question action, and fall through it, because it fails the parameter constraint. You can handle it further down in a catchall/default route if you want:
routes.MapRoute(
"Catchall",
"{*catchall}", // This is a wildcard routes
new { controller = "Home", action = "Lost" }
);
This will send the user to the Lost action in the Home controller. More information on the wildcard can be found here.
NB: The Catchall should reside as the LAST route. Placing it further up the chain will mean that this will handle all others below it, given the lazy nature of routes in ASP.NET MVC.
Here is some useful infromation that might help.
If you have a action method
public ActionResult Edit(int? id)
{}
then if someone types in
/Home/Edit/23
the parameter id will be 23.
however if someone types in
/Home/Edit/Junk
then id will be null which is pretty cool. I thought it would throw a cast error or something. It means that if id is not a null value then it is a valid integer and can be passed to your services etc. for db interaction.
Hope this provides you with some info that I have found whilst testing.
In ASP.NET MVC, you can define a filter implementing IActionFilter interface. You will be able to decorate your action with this attribute so that it will be executed on, before or after your action.
In your case, you will define it to be executed "before" your action. So that, you will be able to cancel it if there is an error in the passed parameters. The key benefit here that you only write the code which checking the passed paramaters once (i.e you define it in your filter) and use it wherever you want in your controller actions.
Read more about MVC filters here: http://haacked.com/archive/2008/08/14/aspnetmvc-filters.aspx
You can specify constraints as regular expressions or define custom constraints. Have a look at this blog post for more information:
http://weblogs.asp.net/stephenwalther/archive/2008/08/06/asp-net-mvc-tip-30-create-custom-route-constraints.aspx
You will still need to deal with the situation where id 43243 doesn't map to anything which could be dealt with as an IActionFilter or in your controller directly.
The problem with that approach is that they still might pass an integer which doesn't map to a page. Just return a 404 if they do that, just as you would with "foo". It's not something to worry about unless you have clear security implications.

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