Generate xml from form inputs - asp.net-mvc

i have a form in Asp.net MVC. On submitting i want to generate the xml of the input. Whats the best way of doing it?
I can do it by capturing the names/id of form in Post event and can generate xml.
Is there any better automated way?

A form could be submitted using either application/x-www-form-urlencoded or multipart/form-data. In both cases you get name=value pairs which cannot automatically be mapped to an hierarchical structure such as XML without any manual indication. As far as XML creation is concerned you may take a look at the XDocument class or XmlWriter. Another alternative is to rely on the default model binder which will instantiate a view model passed as an action parameter that you could serialize to XML.

Are you trying to submit XML over HTTP from the form? If so, you'll need javascript. Jquery can be very helpful here too.
If you are trying to generate XML on the server-side, check out XmlSerialization, its the only way to fly.

Related

Struts 2 - is there any way to escape HTML in input fields?

When I allow a user to enter text using s:textfield, he can enter something like <b>Name</b> or something like \Me/. I want that these should be escaped before I am saving them to the database. When we retrieve them, the escaping is done automatically, but I want it to happen also when we are saving it.
I was trying to return a json output from my action class, but due to a name \a/ stored in my database, wrong json was being formed. This would have been avoided if the name had been escaped before being saved into the database.
You can use StringEscapeUtils. You can call escapeJavascript(textfield) in your action and then store it into the database.
#Daud, The problem you explained is called Cross site scripting or XSS.
And I think you should use Filters to clean the request parameters. This is the most sophisticated way. You can call these filters for the actions which are posting some parameters via request.
Visit my blog to see how to avoid XSS threat using Filter approach.
I also faced this issue when our project was tested by well known firm specializing in security testing and they suggested this filter approach.
You can give it a try.

How to get current page Url in MVC

I am writing a web app that has to deal with urls containing hash character ("#").
I am using MVC 1 with ASP.NET 3.5 (VS 2008).
My urls are like this one:
www.mysite.com/token/?name1=value1&#&name2=value2
My issue is that I cannot find a method to get the original URL, but only get the substring before the hash character:
www.mysite.com/token/?name1=value1&
I used the MVC methods provided from the class HttpRequestBase.
Anyone can suggest me an alternate method to get the entire url?
Thank you, this is my very first question!
PS: I think maybe I have to encode my hash character, isn'it?
You cannot access anything after the # from the server-side - this is all Client-side. You will need to find another way to pass the information you want through to the server.
If you are posting, you can do this with hidden fields. If you are using ajax posts, you can pass the data within the model.

How do you change the default format to XML in Symfony?

I'm writing a restful XML API for a university assignment, the spec requires no HTML frontend.
There doesn't seem to be any documentation (or guessable functionality) regarding how to change the default format? Whilst thus far I have created all templates as ...Success.xml.php it would be easier to just use the regular ones and set this globally; I really expected this functionality to be configurable from YAML.. yet I have found some hard coded references to the HTML format.
The main issue I'm encountering is that part of the assessment is returning a 404 in a certain way (not as a 404 :/), but importantly it must always return XML, and the default setup of a missing route is a HTML 404 not XML (so it only works when I use forward404 from an action running via a XML route.
So in summary, is there a way to do this / what class(es) do I have to override?
Try putting this in factories.yml
all:
request:
class: sfWebRequest
param:
default_format: xml
That will still need the template names changing though. It will just mean that urls that don't specify a format will revert to xml instead of html.
You can subclass sfPHPView and override the initialise method to affect this (copy paste the initialise method from sfView) - the lines like this need changing:
if ('html' != $format)
You then need to change the view class used ... try this:
http://mirmodynamics.com/post/2009/02/23/symfony%3A-use-your-own-View-class

How to access AJAX hash values in ASP.NET MVC?

I'm considering using the hash method to create static urls to content that is managed by ajax calls in a Asp.Net MVC. The proof of concept i'm working on is a profile page /user/profile where one can browse and edit different sections. You could always ask for the following url /user/profile#password to access directly to you profile page, in the change password section
However, i'm wondering if i'm not starting this the bad way, since apparently i can't access the part after the hash in any way, except by declaring a route value for the hash in global.asax. So i'm wondering if this is the right way to access this part of the url?
Am i supposed to declare a route value, or is there another way to work with hash values (a framework, javascript or mvc)?
Edited to add:
In pure javascript, i have no problem using the window.location.hash property, i'm not sure though how standard it is in today's browsers, hence the question about a javascript framework/plugin that would use it.
The thing is that the part that follows the hash (#) is never sent to the server into the HTTP request so the server has absolutely no way of reading it. So no need to waste time in searching for something that doesn't exist.
You could on the other hand tune your routes to generate links that contain the hash part so that client scripts can read it.
Send the hash value document.location.hash as a parameter to the controller action of your choice.
This can be done in the code if needed...
RedirectResult(Url.Action("profile") + "#password");
should work fine

Alternative to ValidateInput("false") when passing HTML to a controller

I have a pretty simple ASP.NET MVC page and am using TinyMCE to allow users to enter comments. However, when I pass the data to a controller I receive the following error message:
A potentially dangerous Request.Form
value was detected from the client
The consensus is that ValidateInput("false") should be set on the Action method but somehow that does not sit well with me. I have tried to intercept this by ordering my action methods and sanitizing the data through my ActionExecitomgContext ActionParameters however this error keeps occurring time and again. Does anyone know of a way to allow this content through (or properly intercept it) without disabling ValidateInput
Do you have specifics on why it doesn't sit well? ValidateInput("false") on the one action that accepts HTML is the proper way to go. The input validation is an old ASP.NET feature that is on by default for security in depth, but is like a sledge hammer. It doesn't understand the nuances of allowed HTML.
For that one action method, you could write your own ValidateSafeHtmlAttribute action filter and put that on the method instead. Maybe that one internally encapsulates a ValidateInput set to false and then does its own validation specific to your scenario. That'd be my recommendation.

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