do browsers remove # in URL automatically? - url

our front end guy needs to form a url containing the hash, (i.e, http://blah/#some-link.) when we hit this on the browser and inspect the http traffic using fiddler, we saw that everything after blah/ gets removed, so the request is really just http://blah/. we also confirmed this on our server eclipse debug log.
the request gets redirected to the correct login page by Spring security(because user hasn't logged in), but the url on the browser now shows:
http://blah/some-link (the hash got removed) but the url on the browser should really be http://blah/log-in.
any idea why this is? any fix or workaround? thanks in advance.

URI part after # is called a fragment:
URI = scheme ":" hier-part [ "?" query ] [ "#" fragment ]
Scheme and hier-part identify the location of a document, and fragment helps the browser to identify a location inside this document.
Fragment is stripped from URI by client software before it is sent as a part of request.
From RFC3986:
the fragment identifier is not used in the scheme-specific
processing of a URI; instead, the fragment identifier is separated
from the rest of the URI prior to a dereference, and thus the
identifying information within the fragment itself is dereferenced
solely by the user agent, regardless of the URI scheme. Although
this separate handling is often perceived to be a loss of
information, particularly for accurate redirection of references as
resources move over time, it also serves to prevent information
providers from denying reference authors the right to refer to
information within a resource selectively.

Content after the # is only used on the client side, per HTTP specification. If you require that information on the server, you can either use a different separator, or you can submit it via ajax after the page has loaded by reading it on the client with javascript.

The part of the URI including and after the hash (#) is never sent to the server as part of the HTTP request.
The reason is that the hash identifier was originally designed to point at references within the given web page and not to new resources on the server.
If you want to get the hash identifier, you'll have to use some client-side JavaScript to grab the value and submit it with the form.

Hashmark is removed from URL when the back button is clicked in IE9, IE10 or IE11
In IE10 , first time on clicking the HREF link leads to the correct below url:
http://www.example.com/yy/zz/ff/paul.html#20007_14
If back button is clicked again the, then it comes to the below url:
http://www.example.com/yy/zz/ff/paul.html
Solution :
Please change the url with https
It works for me

you can do this with javascript
<script>
if(window.location.hash) {
console.log(window.location.hash);
window.location.hash = window.location.hash;
}
</script>

Related

How to fix encoded URL to bind parameters correctly

I'm using a Bank E-Payment webservice and set the redirectURL into http://Example.com/EPaymentResultCallback?Param1=0&Param2=1
when the bank finish it's job, browser redirects to preceding url.
But the problem is: Bank webservice has changed my url into http://Example.com/EPaymentResultCallback?Param1=0&Param2=1 (noticing the extra &).
In fact my innocent url encoded and therefore Param2 will be lost.
I cannot change the websercive obviously. but interested to know if there is a way to resolve the second url parameter (Param2) on my website?
For more general explanation: 'mywebsite' calls a webservice and redirected to a whole new website. after 'new website' done, browser redirects to the given URL (in fact 'mywebsite/somesubUrl/param1&param2') but parameter separator (&) changed into (&) so the second parameter (param2) won't delivered correctly to the action method and an exception raise, pointing that the second input parameter in the action method could not be null.
Actually i`m looking for a built-in solution to read encrypted url. that would be the best. but any other idea is welcomed.

IE9 removes # part from URL (works on Firefox! )

I am working on an application with ASP.NET MVC Routing + AngularJS routing.
My URL lookslike:
https://example.com/Request/#/Search/Request/123
when I breakdown this (http://example.com/Request) is handled by ASP.NET MVC routing. i.e. (Area = Request, controller = "Default", action = "Index")
(#/Search/Request/123) is handled by AngularJS routing.
This works perfectly when I am on http://localhost:8080/
The issue is when I deploy this application to https://example.com/
In this case, If user clicks on above link (received via email),IE 9 recognizes only (https://example.com/Request/") and the server never gets (#/Search/Request/123).
We have enterprise SSO implemented on web server. SSO client intercepts http request and uses URL to redirect back to requested page after authentication.
if # fragment is not sent as part of http request url, sso is not able to redirect back to same page.
I believe this to be a common scenario/issue. I would keep changing the URL scheme as last resort. e.g. (# to !).
How to solve this?
Just found a blog that dealt with this issue exactly:
http://codetunnel.io/how-to-persist-url-hash-fragments-across-a-login-redirect/
He offers two ideas:
When the page loads there simply needs to be some JavaScript that accesses the hash fragment and appends it to the redirect URL in the hidden field. Here's an example using JQuery for simplicity
$(function () {
var $redirect = $('[name="redirect"]');
$redirect.val($redirect.val() + window.location.hash);
});
Or, alternatively
Instead of appending the hash fragment to the hidden field value, you could avoid sending it to the server at all and simply append it to the form action URL.
$(function () {
var $loginForm = $('#loginForm');
var actionUrl = $loginForm.attr('action');
$loginForm.attr('action', actionUrl + window.location.hash);
});
Fragments (the part of the URL after the #) are not necessarily sent to the server-side by the browser. They are for client-side usage only (navigating to a specific location in the document, JavaScript support).
RFC 2396 section 4.1:
When a URI reference is used to perform a retrieval action on the
identified resource, the optional fragment identifier, separated from
the URI by a crosshatch ("#") character, consists of additional
reference information to be interpreted by the user agent after the
retrieval action has been successfully completed. As such, it is not
part of a URI, but is often used in conjunction with a URI.
(emphasis added)
Therefore, the URL scheme you came up with will not work reliably unless you change the # to another character. Alternatively, you could use JavaScript to transfer the information from the fragment in an input that will be reliably passed back to the server. But do note that solution will only work if JavaScript is enabled in the browser, so it is (also) not a 100% reliable solution that will work with all clients.
Either way, using a URL without a fragment is a more reliable approach and IMO a better design choice if you expect that part to be interpreted by the server.
I would remove ugly URL's from your application all together.
This article will walk you through removing ugly URL's in a asp.net-mvc project. It will also ensure that you have your RouteConfig.cs setup correctly.
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/806500/Getting-started-with-AngularJS-and-ASP-NET-MVC-P

#! as opposed to just # in a permalink

I'm designing a permalink system and I just noticed that Twitter and Hipmunk both prefix their permalinks with #!. I was wondering why this is, and if the exclamation point in particular is there for a reason. Wouldn't #/ work just as well, since they're no doubt using a framework that lets them redirect queries to certain templates with a regex URL parser?
http://www.hipmunk.com/#!BOS.SEA,Dec15.Jan02
http://twitter.com/#!/dozba
My only guess is it's because browsers use # to link to an anchor element. Is this why the exclamation point is appended?
This is done to make an "AJAX" page crawlable [by google] for indexing -- It does not affect the other well-defined semantics of the fragment identifier at all!
See Making AJAX Applications Crawlable: Getting Started
Briefly, the solution works as follows: the crawler finds a pretty AJAX URL (that is, a URL containing a #! hash fragment). It then requests the content for this URL from your server in a slightly modified form. Your web server returns the content in the form of an HTML snapshot, which is then processed by the crawler. The search results will show the original URL.
I am sure other search-engines are also following this lead/protocol.
Happy coding.
Also, It is actually perfectly valid, at least per HTML5, to have an element with an ID of "!foo" so the
reasoning in the post is invalid. See the article "The id attribute just got more classy":
HTML5 gets rid of the additional restrictions on the id attribute. The only requirements left — apart from being unique in the document — are that the value must contain at least one character (can’t be empty), and that it can’t contain any space characters.
My guess is that both pages use this in their JavaScript to differ between # (a link to an anchor) and their custom #! which loads some additional content using Ajax.
In that case pretty much everything else would work after the # sign.

Get current fragment in Route, ASP.net MVC

Is there away to get the current fragment from a route that was issued via action link. This is how I am getting the action from the route.
string currentAction = requestContext.RouteData.Values["action"] as string ?? "index";
Can I do something similar to this?
string currentFragment = requestContext.RouteData.Values["Fragment"] as string ?? "";
No, you can't do anything like this. The fragment (everything that follows the # sign in an url) is never sent to the server by the browser, so the sole fact of talking about getting the url fragment server side simply doesn't make sense.
So if you have the following url: http://example.com/foo/bar?key1=value1#abc the server will never be able to fetch abc simply because the client will never send it.
As it has already been pointed out that is not possible. Document fragments (the string after the hash as you call it) are intended for the browsers only to correctly position the viewport. They have no meaning for the server and therefore are not transmitted there.
There is however a workaround you can use. Repeat the fragment as part of your url to make it accessible for the server.
Look at the permalink to the answers in this question. For instance, the link to my answer looks like this:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions
/6285833/get-current-fragment-in-route-asp-net-mvc/6286097#6286097
See how the value 6286097 is duplicated as the last route parameter. It's intentional. You can use this technique as well.
P.S. The fragment must point to an identifier in the document (id of some HTML element). At least in XHTML only identifiers work as fragments. Valid ids may not begin with a digit therefore instead of #6286097 use something like #answer-6286097.
P.S.#2. Do not use any JavaScript trickery to get around this limitation. Basic site functionality and design must work without JavaScript - don't listen to anyone who tells you otherwise. Fragments obviously belong to the basic tool box. Use JavaScript only for advanced interactivity.
I have a workaround for you, but first of all lets get more into the problem.
The strings after the hash symbol which are called Fragment values are not query parameters but they are strings to be read by the client-side (living in the browser) and the server cannot read them because they are not sent to the server by the browser.
Some authentication providers like Google and Azure send the access token as Fragment value for security reasons so that they are not transferred over the internet after they get sent as direct response from the authentication provider.
The only way you can come around that is to use javascript to convert the fragment values to query parameters by replacing the '#' with '?' and redirecting to the endpoint in your server controller.
I suppose the easiest way is to handle all that from server, meaning you get get the request in server, send a javascript code to the browser on the fly, that replaces the '#' into '?' and redirects to your second endpoint which reads the token as strong parameter.
Here how you can do it in ASP.NET Core 3.1:
[AllowAnonymous]
[HttpGet("authredirect")]
[Produces("text/html")]
public virtual ContentResult ConvertUrlFragmentToQueryParamThenRedirect()
{
return Content("<html><script>window.location.href=window.location.href.replace('#', '?').replace('authredirect', 'authparams')</script></html>", "text/html");
}
[AllowAnonymous]
[HttpGet("authparams")]
public virtual void GetAccessToken([FromQuery] string access_token)
{
// now you have your access token server side here
}
Please remember to set your redirectUrl to the correct one, in this case 'YOUR REDIRECT URL/authredirect'.

How does one escape the # sign in a Url pattern in UrlMappings.groovy?

In order to maintain the current set of Urls in a project, I have to be able to use the # (pound sign) in the Url. For some reason the pound sign does not appear to work normally in this project for UrlMappings.groovy.
Is there a special escape-sequence that must be used when placing # signs in UrlMappings.groovy?
Am I missing some reason why one cannot use pound signs at all?
In the following URL Mapping example, the browser goes to the correct page, but the pageName variable is null:
"/test/${urlName}#/overview"(controller:'test', action:'overview') {
pageName = "overview"
}
I thought everything after # in the url would be treated on the client side of the browsers where it tries to find a and scroll to that location.
If you dump the request containing the pound char, do you even see the data behind #?
I used a Named URL mapping and it works fine, no need to escape the "#" sign:
name test: "/#abc" (controller: 'test', action:'homepage')
EDIT: My above answer is wrong. In fact, it falls to a special case when homepage is the default action of the view.
Netbrain is right, the path after "#" will never be sent to server. In stead, I found that it's possible using "%23" instead of "#". Please take a look at here.
For example, instead of /test#/abc we should use /test%23/abc as URL mapping (both at client side & server side).

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