Reading from this blog by Stephen Walther, I'd like to have my Create view post to my Insert action.
Stephen suggests that after my Insert action is done, to redirect to the user to another action. I guess I could redirect them to the Detail view of the object they just created, but I'm curious to know if there are other strategies to let the use know that they successfully submitted a valid object and that the object was saved to my database.
Specifically, I'd like to let the user know what they just did, and also prevent refreshes of the page from attempting to re-post the data. Ideally, I could do this without an intermediary page. Is there a cross-request ViewData that I can stuff this message into? Something similar?
You can use TempData, for this, TempData will be available after you redirect the user to another action (like to index action again)
TempData["userMsg"] = "Product Created";
RedirectTo("List", "Products");
I asked a similar question a month or so ago and got some good responses:
What is the recommended approach to providing user notification confirmations
In short, you may want to consider using HtmlExtensions which can be useful in handling user updates and notifications.
Hope this helps
Like #Rafael says, you could put your message in the TempData collection. Then on the page you're going to, include JBar and have it show a message.
<%
var message = TempData["UserMessage"];
if(message != null)
{%>
<script>
$(function(){
$.bar({message: "<%: message %>"});
});
</script>
%<}%>
I have a customized version of JBar that would work really well for this scenario (it doesn't require a button click). Also, to keep this solution general I would actually put the above code on your master page.
Related
From my client detail page I have a button to edit the client record which redirects to an edit page. I have a "return to client detail" link on the edit page which I want to redirect the user back to the previous client detail page.
<a asp-controller="Client" asp-action="Detail" asp-route-id="#Model.ClientID">Return to client detail</a>
Currently this works as expected but takes extra time as it reloads the detail page from scratch (ie running all the various db queries again). Since the user is really just cancelling the edit without any changes to the state of the client I am wanting to return the user to the previous detail page without having to go through the controller action again.
Essentially I am wanting to simulate the browser back button (to improve responsiveness) but i'm not sure how to implement this or whether it's good practice to do so. Some guidance would be appreciated.
Thanks
For IActionResult you can use this code:
public IActionResult Test()
{
return Redirect(Request.Headers["Referer"].ToString());
}
U know what? I hate JS so i will write answer with backend side. The HTTP referer is an HTTP header field that identifies the address of the webpage that linked to the resource being requested. So simply read that and pass to view (always remember about XSS and validation, user can easly spoof HTTP request)
In action controller
if(Request.Headers["Referer"] != null)
{
ViewData["Reffer"] = Request.Headers["Referer"].ToString();
}
In view (razor)
#if(!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(ViewData["Reffer"]))
{
Return to client detail
}
You can use
<a href='javascript:history.go(-1)'>Return to client detail</a>
or onclick
Return to client detail
It should be like this
<input type="button" onclick= "history.go(-1)" value="Return to client detail" />
One note of caution using Request.Headers["Referer"] - if someone refreshes the destination page for some reason, Request.Headers["Referer"] will be empty.
Using history.go(-1) gives the expected behavior despite page refresh.
I think that you need to get rid of the idea of passing through the controller. If you need to browse quickliest with asp net core code about href you can try this.
<a asp-area="" onclick="history.go(-1);">Return to client detail</a>
I would never rely on my button, thinking a user will prefer it to browser back button.
I would say the correct way to solve this problem is to store the page state somewhere, for example, save ViewModel in TempData or Session. Then, if exists, load from it, instead of running db queries. It's quick and reliable.
This Request.Headers["Referer"] will not work if the user refresh the page or the page is been loaded twice, which mean, clicking back will not take you out of the current page.
VS2013, MVC5, VB
I currently have a page that successfully sends a POST to a payment processor when the user clicks the payment button. I would like to do some additional actions in code after the request to process the payment is made in that View. I don't know how to do that. It may be that I'm thinking of this completely wrong, but that's where I am right now.
I'm assuming I would return to an ActionResult Function to do the final things in code and then go to another View to POST to the payment processor. I guess I'm asking how to force a View to POST immediately when a Return View() is executed so the user isn't required to click a Payment button again. Ergo my question about POSTing from a controller, because all I understand how to do is POST from a View.
Adding to the original post: Suppose I want to execute Sub ClearCart() (in reality it could be any number of things) after the Payment Submit button is clicked. So that means I don't want to POST away to the payment processor's website just yet, I want to first run one more piece of code on my end, then POST to the payment processor. But in order to do that, I only understand how to get back to a controller in order to run Sub ClearCart(). So now after I've run Sub ClearCart(), I have to setup another page with another Payment Submit button, and this time the POST to the payment processor can proceed because I've run the Sub ClearCart(). But that means a user is clicking Pay twice. Once to get me back where I can run some code, and then again when it's time to go to the payment processor for real.
I could very easily be lacking some fundamental concept and therefore my question doesn't make a lot of sense, but that's why I titled this thread the way I did. If I return to a Controller to run some code, I wondered how I can effectively force the POST from Controller code so it's transparent to the user. Am I explaining any better?
I thought in MVC all code is run in the Controllers, and the Views are simply to set up the page. I don't really run server side code from the page, right? And once I hit Submit on a POST to another website, I'm gone until the user and/or return payment information comes back. If I wanted to do anything after the user commits to the payment, I don't know or understand how to do that.
Additional add to the original post: There is a moment in time when the user clicks the submit button. Once that's done, action transfers to the destination in the 'action' parameter and I have no opportunity to do anything until the user or the destination site responds back. If I want to run some code after the Submit Button is clicked, how do I do that? When I started this thread I didn't really know what code to put in this thread to explain my question, but as a result of the comments, I now think this is what I need to show from the View that the user commits from:
<form id="simForm" method='post' action='https://test.authorize.net/gateway/transact.dll'>
...all the stuff presented or included in the view for the user to make his/her decision
<input type='submit' value="Submit Payment" class="btn btn-warning" />
</form>
I want to do things after the user commits, i.e. clicks the Submit Button, but it's too late once they click. I was thinking I could have a button that says Submit Payment, but instead of POSTing to my 'action' link above, POST back to a follow-on Controller where I can execute the code I want to run after the user makes their decision and before they leave my site. But I don't understand how to (1) initiate the real POST to the payment processor from within that follow-on Controller, or (2) force that follow-on Controller's View to execute a POST to the payment processor immediately without requiring another user action.
Now I've taken everyone on this horrible journey through my thinking, it just occurred to me what I'm wanting to do in a controller is redirect from the controller in a way that is a POST with all my page inputs to an external URL. Is there such a method? The only redirect I'm familiar with is for redirecting within the site.
Thanks.
Best Regards,
Alan
One way to do this is to use ajax to get back to a Controller Action, execute the code, and then let ajax finish with the Submit. The following code seems to work fine:
The Controller:
Public Class MiscController
Inherits Controller
Public Function ActionsBeforeSubmit() As ActionResult
ClearCart()
Return New EmptyResult()
End Function
End Class
The View:
<form id="simForm" method='post' target="_blank" action='https://test.authorize.net/gateway/transact.dll'>
...PAGE CONTENT HERE
<input type='button' onclick="UserCommit()" value="Submit Payment" class="btn btn-warning" />
</form>
<script >
function UserCommit() {
$.ajax({
url: '#Url.Action("ActionsBeforeSubmit", "Misc")'
async: false,
})
$("#simForm").submit()
}
</script>
When the button is clicked, the script UserCommit() is run. Within that script ajax runs the Controller Action ActionsBeforeSubmit. Updated this post: async: false required to force Submit to wait until ActionsBeforeSubmit is done. (although some texts suggest to not use async: false) After the Action finishes, the script performs the Submit.
Best Regards,
Alan
I'm speaking of "post" as in the html method, not a blog post. This overlap in terminology is probably a good part of the reason I can't find what I'm looking for.
I have some admin pages set up with forms, using add_action('admin_post_something', 'my_function'); to handle saving the form data to the database. That all works marvelously.
Now I have a client-side piece that requires the user to be logged in to post data, but not necessarily be an admin. The admin_post_something hook will not work (returns page not found) because the user is not an admin. This is expected behavior.
What hook action should I use to process and store information coming from the client-facing portion of my site, and where should this function be located? Examples or links to documentation are appreciated.
Thanks
Inside your function which processes the POST data, you could have a conditional check to see if the form has been submitted. For example:
if ( isset( $_POST['a-hidden-field-name-in-your-form'] ) ) {
// do something here because the form has been submitted
}
In an effort to have everything translateable in our website ( including the error messages for the validations ), we switched almost all of our forms to remote forms. While this helps with the ability to translate error messages, we have encountered other problems, like:
if the user clicks on the submit button multiple times, the action gets called multiple times. If we have a remote form for creating a new record in the database, and assuming that the user's data is valid, each click will add a new object ( with the exact same contents ). Is there any way of making sure that such things cannot happen?
Is there somewhere I could read about remote forms best practices? How could I handle the multiple clicks problem? Is switching all the forms to remote forms a very big mistake?
There is a rails 3 option called :disable_with. Put this on input elements to disable and re-label them while a remote form is being submitted. It adds a data-disable-with tag to those inputs and rails.js can select and bind this functionality.
submit_tag "Complete sale", :disable_with => "Please wait..."
More info can be found here
Easy, and you can achieve that in many ways depending your preferences:
Post the form manually simply using an ajax request and while you wait for the response disable/hide (or whatever you need) the form to ensure the user can't keep doing posts as crazy. Once you get the response from the server, again you can allow the user to post again (cleaning the form first), or show something else or redirect it to another page or again whatever you need.
Use link_to :remote=>true to submit the form and add a callback function to handle the response and also to disable/hide (or whatever you need) the form when it's submitted
Add a js listener to the form to detect when it's submitted and then disable/hide/whatever the form
As you see, there are lots of different ways to achieve what you need.
EDIT: If you need info about binding or handling a form submit from js here you'll find very easy and interesting examples that may help you to do what I suggested you! jQuery Submit
I have remote forms extensively myself, and in most cases I would avoid them. But sometimes your layout or UX demands for on-the-fly drop-down forms, without reloading or refreshing the complete page.
So, let me tackle this in steps.
1. Preventing Normal form double-post
Even with a normal form, a user could double-click your button, or click multiple times, if the user does not get a clear indication that the click has been registered and the action has started.
There are a lot of ways (e.g. javascript) to make this visible, but the easiest in rails is this:
= f.button :submit, :disable_with => "Please wait..."
This will disable the button after the first click, clearly indicating the click has been registered and the action has started.
2. Handling the remote form
For a remote form it is not that much different, but the difference most likely is: what happens afterward ?
With a remote form you have a few options:
In case of error: you update the form with the errors.
you leave the form open, allowing users to keep on entering the data (I think this is your case?)
you redirect the users to some place.
Let me handle those cases. Please understand that those three cases are completely standard when doing a normal form. But not when doing a remote call.
2.1 In case of error
For a remote form to update correctly, you have to do a bit more magic. Not a lot, but a bit.
When using haml, you would have a view called edit.js.haml which would look something like
:plain
$('#your-form-id').replaceWith('#{j render(:partial => '_form') }');
What this does: replace the complete haml with only the form. You will have to structure your views accordingly, to make this work. That is not hard, but just necessary.
2.2 Clearing the form
You have two options:
* re-render the form completely, as with the errors. Only make sure you render the form from a new element, not the just posted one!!
* just send the following javascript instead:
$('#your-form-id').reset();
This will blank the form, and normally, that would effectively render any following clicking useless (some client validation could block posting until some fields are filled in).
2.3 Redirecting
Since you are using a remote form, you can't just redirect. This has to happen client-side, so that is a tad more complicated.
Using haml again this would be something like
:plain
document.location.href = '#{#redirect_uri}';
Conclusion
To prevent double (triple, quadruple, more) posts using remote forms you will have to
disable the button after first click (use :disable_with)
clear the form after succesful submission (reset the form or render with a new element)
Hope this helps.
The simplest solution would be to generate a token for each form. Then your create action could make sure it hasn't been used yet and determine whether the record should be created.
Here's how I would go about writing this feature. Note that I haven't actually tested this, but the concept should work.
1.
Inside the new action create a hash to identify the form request.
def new
#product = Product.new
#form_token = session["form_token"] = SecureRandom.hex(15)
end
2.
Add a hidden field to the form that stores the form token. This will be captured in the create action to make sure the form hasn't been submitted before.
<%= hidden_field_tag :form_token, #form_token %>
3.
In the create action you can make sure the form token matches between the session and params variables. This will give you a chance to see if this is the first or second submission.
def create
# delete the form token if it matches
if session[:form_token] == params[:form_token]
session[:form_token] = nil
else
# if it doesn't match then check if a record was created recently
product = Product.where('created_at > ?', 3.minutes.ago).where(title: params[:product][:title]).last
# if the product exists then show it
# or just return because it is a remote form
redirect_to product and return if product.present?
end
# normal create action here ...
end
Update: What I have described above has a name, it is called a Synchronizer (or Déjà vu) Token. As described in this article, is a proper method to prevent a double submit.
This strategy addresses the problem of duplicate form submissions. A synchronizer token is set in a user's session and included with each form returned to the client. When that form is submitted, the synchronizer token in the form is compared to the synchronizer token in the session. The tokens should match the first time the form is submitted. If the tokens do not match, then the form submission may be disallowed and an error returned to the user. Token mismatch may occur when the user submits a form, then clicks the Back button in the browser and attempts to resubmit the same form.
On the other hand, if the two token values match, then we are confident that the flow of control is exactly as expected. At this point, the token value in the session is modified to a new value and the form submission is accepted.
I hate to say it, but it sounds like you've come up with a cure that's worse than the disease.
Why not use i18n for translations? That certainly would be the 'Rails way'...
If you must continue down this route, you are going to have to start using Javascript. Remote forms are usually for small 'AJAXy things' like votes or comments. Creating whole objects without leaving the page is useful for when people might want to create lots of them in a row (the exact problem you're trying to solve).
As soon as you start using AJAX, you have to deal with the fact that you'll have to get into doing some JS. It's client-side stuff and therefore not Rail's speciality.
If you feel that you've gone so far down this road that you can't turn back, I would suggest that the AJAX response should at least reset the form. This would then stop people creating the same thing more than once by mistake.
From a UI/UX point of view, it should also bring up a flash message letting users know that they successfully created the object.
So in summary - if you can afford the time, git reset and start using i18n, if you can't, make the ajax callback reset the form and set a flash message.
Edit: it just occurred to me that you could even get the AJAX to redirect the page for you (but you'd have to handle the flash messages yourself). However, using a remote form that then redirects via javascript is FUGLY...
I've had similar issues with using a popup on mouseover, and not wanting to queue several requests. To get more control, you might find it easier to use javascript/coffeescript directly instead of UJS (as I did).
The way I resolved it was assigning the Ajax call to a variable and checking if the variable was assigned. In my situation, I'd abort the ajax call, but you would probably want to return from the function and set the variable to null once the ajax call is completed successfully.
This coffeescript example is from my popup which uses a "GET", but in theory it should be the same for a "POST" or "PUT".
e.g.
jQuery ->
ajaxCall = null
$("#popupContent").html " "
$("#popup").live "mouseover", ->
if ajaxCall
return
ajaxCall = $.ajax(
type: "GET"
url: "/whatever_url"
beforeSend: ->
$("#popupContent").prepend "<p class=\"loading-text\">Loading..please wait...</p>"
success: (data) ->
$("#popupContent").empty().append(data)
complete: ->
$"(.loading-text").remove()
ajaxCall = null
)
I've left out my mouseout, and timer handling for brevity.
You can try something like that for ajax requests.
Set block variable true for ajax requests
before_filter :xhr_blocker
def xhr_blocker
if request.xhr?
if session[:xhr_blocker]
respond_to do |format|
format.json, status: :unprocessable_entity
end
else
session[:xhr_blocker] = true
end
end
end
Clear xhr_blocker variable with an after filter method
after_filter :clear_xhr_blocker
def clear_xhr_blocker
session[:xhr_blocker] = nil
end
I would bind to ajax:complete, (or ajax:success and ajax:error) to redirect or update the DOM to remove/change the form as necessary when the request is complete.
I have a page "Results" with a form and when "submit" is clicked, the form is submmited to another Action. So far, so good...
But, this works fine just if user is logged in. If not, he will be redirected to "Login" page and my FormCollection loses its data.
Is there a way to persist this data without using TempData??
Thanks!!
I don't think that's possible. The only thing the system remembers during the redirect to the login page is the 'return url'. No post data is saved (this could be megabytes of data...)
You can use the Session object as alternative, or make sure that the user is logged in before you post.
Or, if it's just a search result, try to live without the POST, and use a GET (which also has other advantages)
I would prefer to disallow unauthorized user to visit "Results" page or at least to show him message "Please login first" instead of the form.