I am using a third party service that does an async callback to a URL I provide to them.
So I tell them to use http://www.mysite.com/Status/Incoming.
This must obviously map to an Incoming() method on my StatusController.
However, what I don't have control over is the format of the parameters they call my URL with.
E.g. They will do a callback such as: http://www.mysite.com/Status/Incoming?param1=val1¶m2=val2¶m3=val3
I want to map this to the parameters of my action method: Incoming(string param1, string param2, int param3)
How do I do this?
I have found a lot of stuff about custom routing, but nothing about legacy QueryString parameters.
There is no such thing as legacy query string parameters. There are query string parameters and they are part of the HTTP specification. And assuming that the http://www.mysite.com/Status/Incoming?param1=val1¶m2=val2¶m3=val3 url is called you don't need any route to make it map to the following action (the default route will do just fine):
public ActionResult Incoming(string param1, string param2, string param3)
{
...
}
The default model will take care of binding those values.
Why not use a catch all?
routes.MapRoute(
"Incoming",
"Status/Incoming/{*path}", // URL with parameters
new { controller = "Status", action = "Incoming"}
);
then in your controller,
public ActionResult Incoming(string path){
// the next line would probably be better off in a model binder, but this works:
var dictionary = path
.Substring(path.IndexOf("?")+1)
.Split("&")
.Select(x =>
{
var kvArray = x.Split("=");
return new KeyValuePair<string, string>(kvArray[0], kvArray[1]);
})
.ToDictionary(x=>x.Key,x=>x.Value);
return Incoming(dictionary);
}
public ActionResult Incoming(Dictionary<string,string> dictionary){
//do stuff
}
All that being said, I think using the Request.QueryString is probably a better approach. As long as you are using MVC, it is accessible from your controller. However, if you can guarantee that the correct parameters will be passed then Darin's approach is going to be the best choice.
When I've had to deal with this before now, I just use the "legacy" call of Request.QueryString. It still works, even if it isn't very graceful.
Related
Is there a way to generate the post URL in the GET action if both the GET and the POST methods share the same name?
The reason for needing to generate the post URL in the controller is that we aren't dealing with the views but only providing the ViewModel that contains a payload in the form of JSON. And the front-end needs to know where to post form values to.
[HttpGet]
public ActionResult MethodName(string id)
{
...
}
[HttpPost]
public JsonResult MethodName(ViewModel model)
{
...
}
e.g. the get URL would be:
/controller/methodname/123
and the post URL would be:
/controller/methodname
in the get action, I need to feed the front-end with the post URL of which the form values would be consumed.
using Url.Action("methodname", "controller", new { id = string.Empty}) would generate a URL that's the same to the post URL, but it's sort of hack-ish way
Another option would be to define a route for the post method and use Url.RouteUrl("PostMethodName") to generate the URL.
Neither of these seem ideal, so is there another (cleaner) way to get this done?
Walter,
I am failing to understand how this is "hack-ish." You are providing a restricted post action with a strongly typed model, the only difference if your action result type. The URL's can be the same if you wish.
Alternativtly you can create just an action for your aJax method such as.
[HttpPost]
public JsonResult ajaxMethod(ViewModel model){
//...
}
This is restrictive to just the HttpPost method and contains your view model. Actions dont need views they simply return an action result. If you wanted to get very bare-bones and action can be an object returning anything. Your route for this action is similar to all other routes:
#Url.Action("ajaxMethod", "controller")
to generate
/controller/ajaxMethod
I may have completly missed the question, please let me know if this doesnt help.
EDIT: Updated from comments.
Just to add if you would like to generate a route or action url in your controller action you can simply use the Url helper in your action such as.
ViewBag.Url = Url.Action("MethodName", "Controller");
Another option is to create a custom Route implementation. A very basic one that includes a line to fix your problem (Drop the existing route parameters) can look like this:
public class CustomRoute : Route
{
public CustomRoute(string url, IRouteHandler routeHandler)
: base(url, routeHandler)
{
}
public override RouteData GetRouteData(HttpContextBase httpContext)
{
var routeData = base.GetRouteData(httpContext);
if (routeData == null)
{
return null;
}
/* custom implementation here */
return routeData;
}
public override VirtualPathData GetVirtualPath(RequestContext requestContext, RouteValueDictionary values)
{
/*
* GetVirtualPath is called until a suitable route is found.
* This means modifying the passed RouteValueDictionary has consequenses for subsequent calls.
* Therefore, always work with a copy if you want to modify any values: new RouteValueDictionary(values)
*/
/*
* Drop the existing route parameters. Implicitness can only cause confusion.
*/
requestContext = new RequestContext(requestContext.HttpContext, new RouteData());
return base.GetVirtualPath(requestContext, values);
}
}
You probably also want to have MapRoute methods for your custom route. For this, you just need to look at the original implementation, copy paste it and replace Route with CustomRoute.
I was getting the query string back using:
public ActionResult Index(int id)
{
var queryString = Request["myQueryString"];
}
Then I looked at:
help-testing-mvc3-controller-that-accesses-querystring
Which states:
It is against MVC's design pattern to use HttpRequest directly. You can access the query string variables on your action as parameters.
I don't really understand this. Is what I've done against the design pattern? If it is why is that and how could it be done?
It breaks the concept of model binding. It also gets complicated with unit testing and trying to new up a new HttpContext for a test. If it was just a parameter, you could just pass the value.
The preferred (and easier to read) method would be:
public ActionResult Index(int id, string myQueryString)
{
...
}
Your action method should take most of the data submitted from your form. One of the strengths of MVC is the model binding it has within it. Check out this page, as it has a good example of this:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/159749/ASP-NET-MVC-Model-Binding-Part1
You can accept literals (string, bool, etc.) but also strongly typed objects in your action methods.
I want to use BegingForm with Get method and this is what I do
#using (Html.BeginForm("Search","Home",FormMethod.Get))
{
//My input elements
}
public class HomeController : Controller
{
public ActionResult Search(string queryString)
{
}
}
but query string always comes back as null. I think, I need to do something with route but no luck
routes.MapRoute(
"SearchRoute", // Route name
"Home/Search{queryString}", // URL with parameters
new { controller = "Home", action = "Search", filter = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults
);
Obviously, the coming url to the server is something like
Home/Search?query="blah"&query2="blah"&query3="blah"
What am I doing wrong? What is the correct way to get the query parameters in my controller when I want to use get with beginform?
Also, what if the content of my BeginForm can change and so the query string parameter names could be different depending on the rendered page but I want one Search method that analyze the query string and do the right thing?
Also, is a way for them to query parameters to come in a dictionary?
Obviously, the coming url to the server is something like
Home/Search?query="blah"&query2="blah"&query3="blah"
That's how HTML <form> with method GET works and this has nothing to do with ASP.NET MVC, it's plain HTML. You can't do much about it other than having your controller action look like this:
public ActionResult Search(SearchViewModel model)
{
...
}
Where SearchViewModel will contain properties for each input field on this form. Also you don't need this SearchRoute as it won't work that way.
This being said you could probably use javascript in order to subscribe for the onsubmit event of the form, cancel the default submission (which exhibits the behavior you are observing currently), manually fetch all the values inside your form and then manually generate the url you want and redirect to it using window.location.href = '....';. I am mentioning this only for completeness but absolutely not as something that I recommend or that you should ever do.
If you want to get the items from the query string, just use the "Request" object from the ControllerBase:
public ActionResult Search()
{
var queries = new List<string>();
foreach (var parameter in Request.QueryString)
{
queries.Add(parameter.ToString());
}
//Do Stuff with the query parameters...
return View("Index");
}
And "Request.QueryString" is a dictionary just as you wanted :)
This is ASP.NET MVC v1 (not using the v2 yet)
I have a route entry like this:
routes.MapRoute(
"Srp",
"soeg-{searchQuery}/{listingType}",
new { controller = "Srp", action = "Search", listingType = string.Empty },
new { listingType = "privat|forhandler|"}
);
and an action to match it:
public ActionResult Search(QueryParameters queryParameters)
It works perfectly - the mvc framework knows to map the searchQuery and listingType onto the two properties of the QueryParameters object with the same names.
My problem is unit testing. I'm using Mvccontrib project and LOVING the ShouldMapTo method:
[Test]
public void RegisterSrpRoutes_SoegWithKeywordAndValidListingType_ShouldMapCorrectly()
{
var queryParameters = new QueryParameters {SearchQuery = "hest", ListingType = "privat"};
"~/soeg-hest/privat".ShouldMapTo<SrpController>(controller => controller.Search(queryParameters));
}
It doesn't work though! I used to have specific parameters on my action like this:
public ActionResult Search(string searchQuery, string listingType)
which worked (obviously the unittest would try and map to Search with two parameters (strings) instead of this one object.
Does anyone have an idea of how to solve the problem, short of going back to writing all properties as parameters. The mvc automapping of properties rocks, but i'm hoping there is some way i can have mvccontribs testhelper work with that as well.
It's been a while since I looked at this code, but I believe that it does a .Equals call on the parameter you send. For primitive types this is easy, but for you parameter object, try implementing the Equals override and have it test the equality of each of the properties.
When my JavaScript code uses AJAX to call an ASP.NET MVC method, it passes values in JSON. For example:
var request = new XMLHttpRequest();
request.open("GET", "http://www.awesome.com/DoSomething?param1=%22some%20string%22¶m2=1234", true); // parameter string created with JSON.stringify
or
var request = new XMLHttpRequest();
request.open("POST", "http://www.awesome.com/DoSomething", true);
// set some headers
request.send("param1=%22some%20string%22¶m2=1234"); // parameter string created with JSON.stringify
On the ASP.NET MVC side, I have my method to handle the call:
public void DoSomething(string param1, string param2) {
What sucks is param1 is surrounded with quotation marks:
"some string"
What sucks more is param2 is the string:
1234
when I really want the value as an integer. So, the first thing I have to do is use DataContractJsonSerializer to decode both these puppies so my string doesn't have quotation marks and my second string is converted to an int. It's not too bad the first one or two times, but gets old having to do for every single AJAX action.
Ideally, it'd be awesome to have a signature like:
public void DoSomething(string param1, int param2)
where I could just jump right in and use my values without worrying about JSON decoding, just like is done for non-AJAX actions.
Is there a way to do this?
Oh, after posting I found code that does what I'm looking for. See the "ObjectFilter" class near the bottom:
http://weblogs.asp.net/omarzabir/archive/2008/10/03/create-rest-api-using-asp-net-mvc-that-speaks-both-json-and-plain-xml.aspx
I'm not sure what the advantage is of using a ModelBinder versus an ObjectFilter for this, but here's a solution I figured out that uses a custom ModelBinder.
How do I pass a Dictionary as a parameter to an ActionResult method from jQuery/Ajax?