Cross domain post - asp.net-mvc

I want to do a cross sub domain post in asp.net mvc and as the post data ,i want to pass an object which will be used in the recieving action in controller .Can anyone suggest how i can do that?
There are two applications .Application 1 needs to open application2 in a separate browser and post some data to it which application 2 will use to render some stuff.Sorry for not being clear but they are actually under the same parent domain but different subdomains.Both the applications are mvc applications.

If both sites are in your control, then you could have a service on the server that talks to both and send data via the service from one site to the other.
If one site is out of your control, then I'm not sure that cross domain posting is a good idea.

Related

Web Services in ASP.NET MVC 4 Application

I've a web site developed using MVC 4 ASP.net application. I'm new to .net platform & I want to add web service which would return me operating system name of users device based on certain input.
Assuming I've logic to capture OS information using inputted data, how do I go forward in building this web service?
Do I need to have a complete separate solution file which will have a web service or in existing MVC 4 asp.net application itself, should I create a new project which would be of type "WCF Service Application"? Again I don't know much about WCF service either, if I use it, how would the URL be accessible, etc?
Can anyone give me some insights?
Note: I've also a separate REST web service which is a completely separate solution with separate projects but deployed on same IIS.
Thanks in Advance!
You don't need to create a WebAPI project just for what you described (i'm assuming one or a few end points).
Simply use MVC controllers that return JSON for example, this way you deal with a single framework.
Reasons to move to Web API is if you need support for CORS, need content negotiation for results etc. From what you are describing it's completely fine to stay with MVC.

Upshot/Knockout Architectural Best Practices - What is the preferred of method of limiting user access to functions exposed through the WebAPI?

A fundamental idea in implementing a single page application with Knockout and Upshot is that most of the data will received from and sent to the server in JSON format using AJAX.
On the server, we will expose a number of endpoints (using perhaps WebAPI and the DbDataController) to respond to requests from Upshot. These endpoints may provide general queries for data such as lists of clients, previous orders, account information, etc.
Obviously, it is not desirable for one client to be able view another clients account information, previous orders, or other private data.
What strategies or approaches be used to secure queries (and data) which are being requested from upshot (or other mechanism) to the server? (In other words, how do we make sure a user only has access to his own data?)
Are the strategies the same or different than those used in a normal ASP.NET MVC application--namely use of the Authorize attribute?
This is probably a very simple question, but I am still not clear on all the differences between WebAPI controllers and normally ASP.NET MVC controllers.
Thank for your help!
A custom authorize attribute is one possible way to implement this requirement. The only difference with standard ASP.NET MVC controllers is that you derive from System.Web.Http.AuthorizeAttribute instead of System.Web.Mvc.AuthorizeAttribute.

WCF REST Web API and MVC on same server and port

I'm looking at putting together a REST based system which still has a standard browser style access. My desire is to have both of these on the same machine, but what are my options?
Use IIS to host both the web-site and the REST service (different URIs, e.g. http://mysite.com/ and http://mysite.com/api
Use IIS and some magic I don't yet know to have two domains mapped to the same machine but different services (e.g. http://www.mysite.com and http://api.mysite.com
Combine the two technologies into a single service (that perhaps uses routing tables to direct the requests to MVC or WCF where appropriate).
My preference would be the third option, this would allow me to have a single code-base and single repository accessing. The WCF page on codeplex mentions in its release notes, "not tested with MVC3" - is this suggesting that this is a possible approach?
I'm not keen on using MVC for the REST implementation as it is intended that the majority of interaction with my site goes via API, so I want that as the focus.
I've ported the contact manager to use MVC 3. It definiately works though we've not done exhaustive testing. The one thing in general to cognizant of with regards to web api is that both MVC Routes and Service Route are greedy. If your default route is first then MVC will try to grab your HTTP Service requests. One thing you will want to do is put your Service Route first before your MVC routes. If you run into additional issues, you may need to use custom routing constraints.
In http://webapicontrib.codeplex.com there is a sample that works with MVC 3. It is in the Samples/experimental folder. However, it was built with a custom version of WCF Web API. I don't believe it needs to be though. I've been meaning to get the author of the sample to switch it over.

Database driven asp.net MVC application

I have a CRUD application written in Classic ASP (not .net) which transfers (routes) page requests to relevant servers using a loadbalancer DLL.
It works like this:
Someone requests for www.mywebsite.com/products
There is an index.asp under folder products that redirects the request to either:
http://www1.mywebsite.com/products
or
http://www2.mywebsite.com/products
based on a loadbalancer logic.
Another scenario:
Someone requests for www.mywebsite.com/products/details
There is a index.asp under the sub folder details within the products folder that redirects the request to either:
http://www1.mywebsite.com/products/details
or
http://www2.mywebsite.com/products/details
based on loadbalancer logic
The main issue with application is whenever I include a new page, I need to create a folder and index.asp page to redirect the page.
We have a CMS database which contains the details of all pages. So I want to create an MVC application to replace the existing Classic ASP application.
But I didn't find any database driven MVC applications and I'm bit confused by routing. Do I need to create a separate route for each main folder I have or should I create a generic route for all pages.
Any help would be appreciated.
You don't have to migrate to ASP.NET MVC just for the URL rewriting.
IIS 7 does have an integrated URL rewrite module and ASP.NET 4 includes routing as well.
IIS URL Rewriting and ASP.NET Routing
URL Rewriting in ASP.NET
Anyhow, if you search e.g. on Codeplex for ASP.NET MVC projects, you'll find a lot of them which are database driven.
You don't need to create individual routes for each seperate item. Think about the concept of querystrings (?id=15&day=monday). URL rewriting is pretty much the same.
Update
I've overseen that your talking about classic ASP.
The build in URL rewrite module in IIS 7 works also fine with classic ASP. If you are having an older IIS version you need a 3rd party ISAPI rewrite module.
Anyhow, switch it to ASP.NET MVC ;)
MVC would lend itself very well to sorting your routing problem. So would ASP.NET 4.
However, the problem you have is that you don't know enough to ask a precise question. Hence your confusion with routing in MVC.
I would therefore suggest reading the nerddinners tutorial. You can get a PDF download for free. To go a step further, read Stephen Sandersons book on MVC 2 (or MVC3 in a couple of months).
If you follow the nerddinners tutorial and Stephen Sanderson's tutorial, that will give you a better idea of how it works.
In short, this is how MVC works:
In MVC, you forget about files and folders.
Instead, you have Controllers and actions. The routes map the requests to the right controller and action.
The code in the actions then decide which View to stuff full of data (from a database or wherever, it doesn't matter). The Views are just templates that are told what to do and what data to display.
The Controllers ask the Model for the data that they want.
Ie, the data access is all done in the Model, neatly separated from the User Interface.
M: Model
V: Views
C: Controller
The above is probably meaningless to you. It is a VERY different mindset to ASP classic.
If you are coming from old ASP, you will have a long hike, but it can be done. I came from Access. Anyway, read the books, follow the tutorial and see if it is for you.
When you are ready, we will still be here to help with more precise questions.
Asp.net MVC routing in your migrated application
Based on requests you've shown here you can sort everything up with just default route:
{controller}/{action}/{id}
In your case you'd have a ProductsController with all the actions you need.
Load balancing application
But having an Asp.net MVC application is just one part. This application will run on both load balanced servers. All redirecting should be done before they hit the MVC application.
If you intend to continue using the same loadbalancer DLL you could create a different Asp.net MVC application with only one route definition:
{*path}
and a single controller and action that does it all:
public Load: Controller
{
public ActionResult Balance(path)
{
// decide for web server and attach path to subdomain
}
}
This should do the trick just fine as long as the overhead of this action is very small. Otherwise your load balancing logic will become the bottleneck of your application since all requests go through this load balancer (it does that now as well so bare in mind this is no different now; never mind the authentication process on different subdomains you may be using).
Load balancing alternative
You should consider using the web farm balancing capabilities on the IIS 7 that will run your application on several web servers (because that's what your load balancing does in the first place). Search the web for web farm information. You can start with this:
http://www.iis.net/download/webfarmframework

Securing a mvc view so only the server can access it

I'm building a .Net MVC app, where I'm using one particular view to generate an internal report. I don't want the users of the site to gain access to this page at all.
I've a console app that fires every so often which will scrape some of the details from this page by hitting it's URL.
I don't like the idea of having the URL hanging out there but I'm not sure of another way to go about it.
Thoughts on what might be the best practice way for tackling this?
Edit:
Here's what I ended up doing, created a new WCF Service project in the solution. I also copied basically what was the MVC view page into a new standard web forms page in this project. On top of adding security via the regular .net Authentication methods (eg set only valid windows users can access the page), I can also lock down the vhost to only be accessed by certain IP's.
The best practice would be to expose a wcf service for this, and set up a security model that is different than website.
If you must use MVC the best approach use forms authentication with mvc and set
[Authorize(Roles = "SecureUser")]
On the View.
If the view never needs to be rendered at all except to provide data for the console app, then why not have the console app simply connect to your database to get the data directly instead of going through the web app? You could still do this for the console app even if the view does need to be available for some users, then control access to the view using the Authorization attribute, which could suitably restricted now that an external app need not have access to it.

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