knockout in asp.net web from master page - asp.net

Good day.
I was using knockout in an asp.net web form master page. On master page i have an advanced search control completely with knockout. After selecting the search criteria by readio buttons, tabs and dropdowns, on clicking a search button redirect to a details page which is also inherited from the same master page.
I need to persists the selected view from the first page in the details page along with populating the search result.
But I'm unable to do it as an infant in knockout.
I guess if I can remove the binding and apply it again, it will be happen.(don't know I'm wrong or not).
Kindly advice me to get over this situation.
Thanks
Santhi

It sounds like you're doing a complete trip to the server between pages. In that case you'll need to store the state of your search box somehow before the redirect, and then load that state after the redirect. You have a couple ways to do this.
Using Cookies
You could serialize the state of your select control into a JSON string and store it in a cookie. When your search box loads, look for that cookie using JavaScript and if it exists, load the data into your search box.
Using the Query String
You could serialize the state of your select control into the query string, and load from that. This would be a little bit more reliable in case cookies are turned off on the user's browser.
Using Local Storage
If you're working in modern browsers and supporting HTML 5, you could use HTML 5 local storage to store the search state between postbacks. http://diveintohtml5.info/storage.html
Serializing your Model State
Take a look at this page of the Knockout JS documentation for more info on serializing your object graph. http://knockoutjs.com/documentation/json-data.html
I hope this helps!

Related

Understanding ViewState and FormData

I just got started with ASP.NET MVC, and I suddenly asked myself: why does ASP.NET need ViewState in the first place? FormData is actually holding the state across postbacks. ViewState is only needed if the state of the control is changed, and that change is NOT included in FormData. For example, what if the event handler changed the control's font color?
Two questions:
For WebForms, is that the reason for the need of ViewState?
If yes, how can MVC "maintain a control's property which is NOT in FormData"?
MVC and WebForms are very different in this regard. The point of WebForms was to help ease WinFroms developers in to web development. For that reason the infrastructure of WebForms simulates statefullness whenever it can. ViewState is one of the ways this is implemented. Since the browser only posts back form fields, in WebForms the entire page is one big form and the entire page is posted to the server. The ViewState is a hidden field, which holds everything BUT the data in the inputs, selects, etc. which the browser posts by default.
On the other hand MVC does not try to simulate statefullness. It works more directly with HTTP and the basic rules of a stateless system. So when you post a form ONLY the data in the inputs, selects, etc. gets posted. Nothing else makes it back to the server.
This is why, if you want to return the same view after a post with the updated data, you have to refill the ViewModel with data like you did in the original get method. MVC does not take care of this for you like WebForms.
Regarding why View State in first place, your explanation is related. View State is used to persist state across Post Backs and mainly to handle properties updated programmatic for example page with label and button and you have event handler for the button that change the label front color to red , in the page load the controls initiate the label with default color however when the button click it change the label color to red and keep that change in the view state so if anything triggered post back then after loading the controls in the page load it sets the front color to the value already saved inside the viewstate
For more details please check the following link http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms972976.aspx#viewstate_topic3
MVC doesn't have viewstate, MVC is based on model binding so when a form is posted MVC framework read the httprequest parameters and try to create strongly typed object from that request and you can create your own model binder that tell the MVC how to read the http request

Cross-page posting with target _blank leaves source page unfunctional

I'm trying to describe it in as few steps as possible:
I have Page1.aspx with lot of controls, and Preview and Save button among those. I also have Page2.aspx that is the redirection target of a Preview Button click.
Since I need all the controls selections from Page1 to draw a preview on Page2 the redirection is done with setting Preview's PostBackUrl.
I also must have preview shown on a new tab or window so I used onClientClick="aspnetForm.target='_blank'" for Preview button definition.
Save button-click callback, after storing data to a database does redirection to some Page0.aspx (initial list of reports - the subject of the code)
Preview button works fine - a preview renders in a new tab, but when I go to the old tab and click on Save, I see from debugger, that firstly Page2.aspx(?) and secondly Page1.aspx are loaded. Then all the data is stored in the db, but though Page0 redirection is executed Page1.aspx stays loaded in the browser.
I have no idea what processes are behind this. Could one who knows give me an insight? Or if you consider my approach impossible to implement give some idea how to do the same?
If it's of importance, everything on the Page1 is located in an update panel.
Thank you very much for replying
In ASP.NET there are basically zero (0) circumstances in which you will ever send form data from one page to another. Although what exactly you are trying to accomplish is vague, you can consider some of the following:
Isolate unique operations/systems to a single page. If you have something like a User Profile, don't have three different aspx pages; just use a single page for the user or admin to manage that data / functions. Postback events are your friend.
Understand the difference between ViewState and traditional form data. I'm guessing that if you're trying to post form data from one page to another, you probably don't understand the point of ViewState. Using a single page to maintain temporary data that the user is currently working with is a great use for ViewState. If you want the data to appear on another page then you need to consider the data from the previous page as final and thus should be saved to a database or some other medium.
These are just some general guidelines because there is no exact answer to your problem without saying something generic like "You're doing it wrong." I would recommend starting by never again trying to post form data from one aspx page to another.

Can I change the browser URL while maintaining ViewState in ASP.NET?

I'm doing some brainstorming for a portal framework, and I'm envisioning a breadcrumb navigation stack that is tracked via the ViewState (so that if the user clicks "back" in their browser and clicks some other link, the breadcrumb trail will depart from the right page). My pages are really just ascx controls that get loaded into a placeholder control on the main portal page based on the URL. When the user clicks a portal link, there is a postback that loads the original page and invokes the given link's "clicked" handler, which should then "push" the current location onto the breadcrumb stack before sending the browser a redirect instruction to change the URL to that of the page that I want to go to.
That's as far as my brainstorming goes for the moment, because once we perform a redirect, we lose the ViewState. Rather than doing the redirect, I've thought of simply telling my main portal page to replace the current page control with the target page control, thus avoiding the extra http round-trip and allowing me to keep the ViewState. But then my entire website experience occurs in the context of a single URL, so I lose URL bookmarking among other things. And if I wrap some of my controls in AJAX panels, the entire site happens in one page request as far as the browser's history is concerned.
What I would like is some way to have the browsing history and URLs behave as if each link is leading them to a new page with a descriptive URL and all that, but still have some way to know the path that the user took to get to the page that they're on (ViewState seeming to be the simplest way to track this).
Could anyone suggest some techniques I might try using?
First suggestion... You may want to look into ASP.NET MVC. However, I have to admit to some ignorance here as I'm not sure that would really solve your problem. But it sounds like the sort of thing MVC would be suited for.
Second... it's possible to override the methods responsible for saving and loading ViewState. One of the things you can do, for instance, is push the ViewState into the Session rather than sending it down to the user and back up on postback. You could easily add some custom code here.
Third... I think you may want to rethink part of your design. The ViewState really serves one purpose: It recreates the state of the page as it existed when the page was rendered for the user. If you are moving to a different page, or a new set of controls, why would you need the ViewState at all? The ViewState itself is really just a hack to begin with... ASP.NET's way of maintaining state on top of a stateless system. (but that's a whole 'nother discussion) We have other methods of maintaining state... the primary mechanism being the Session object. Why not save your breaacrumb data there instead?
I would look at using cookies. For performance reasons, you really want to avoid HTTP redirects if you can, and ViewState only works if the user submits a form, not for regular links.
You might do something like maintain several path lists in cookies that show the path that the user took to go from one page to another. Maybe you set a unique ID with each page that is applied by some JavaScript as a query string when the user clicks on a link, and the server uses that ID and the past history from the cookies to determine how to render the bread crumb on the next page?

Something like viewstate and session

The problem that I am having is as follows:
I currently have a custom class that generates buttons and places them on a placeholder on a master page.
The events for these buttons put specific values into session that differs values for a database query. In essence, the buttons serve as filters for charts.
After creating all the buttons, I realized that session values will stay constant from page to page, so everytime a user enters a different page while another is open, the filters selected on the open page will remain constant for the new page that is opened.
At first, I wanted to use viewstate rather than session, but then realized that a master page and a content page do not share the same viewstate.
At the current time, I am thinking of using a prefix for the sesson key that will identify what page the filters actually exist for. However, I am not wanting to overload session with numerous values if the user wishes to have many pages open at the same time.
Any solutions that would entail a way to share viewstate (or some other way to store values) between app_code, the master, and the content page?
Use HttpContext.Current.Items, it is a key-value pair collection with a lifetime of a single Http Request.
Have you considered Context.Items?
How many filters are we talking here? Store the filter values in the URL. Have you seen some of the URLs that google or an ecommerce site uses? They are quite long. Here is how I do it:
I store the filter values in the query like, www.chart.com?filter1=val1&filter2=val2 etc.
I user JQuery's query plugin to manipulate the query on the client side, and then request the chart from the server again, using the new query.
This way, I'm not junking up session, cookies, or anything like that, and if the user wants to store a bookmark to a particular chart or email it to a friend, they can and the filters are preserved.
I'm starting to think the answer shown in the following question will work:
ViewState object lost in Master Page Load
Exposing the desired variables via a property.
If the data isn't too long, cookies are a typical solution.
Another option is to use Silverlight isolated storage. The Silverlight control itself could be invisible (no UI).

How to persist ViewState for reuse later?

Is it possible to save ViewState information, e.g. to session, so that when you navigate away from the page it is persisted somehow? Then when you return to that page you can reload the view state and the choices you've made are preserved.
Background
I have two pages, a report page, where you can pick data, do some filtering and sorting etc. and a chart-page, where the data you picked from the report page can be presented in different ways, with different choices for presentation.
If the user has tested different presentations, simply using the back-button could mean quite a few clicks before the user's back at the report page. I'd like a direct link to the report page.
Using QueryString to save control states is not an option.
I can't customize the ViewState storage for the whole application.
Yes, it's possible to store the Viewstate in something like a database. You just need to implement one of the viewstate providers. See here for an example using the SqlViewStateProvider.
Edit: Just re-read your post, and saw that you said you couldn't customize how the viewstate is stored for the whole application. If that's the case, you might want to look into storing it in a session. Scott Hanselman discusses that here.
Your link could automatically navigate back the required number of pages using JavaScript. Look at window.history, if you can count the number of pages forward you can navigate back that many.
The ViewState is already designed to persist the state of the user controls. If your user has made a selection and that selection is processed server side with a full page postback the new state of the controls will be saved in the ViewState (hidden input __VIEWSTATE).
If your report is using AJAX and partial page postbacks then you won't get the ViewState on the page anyway.
Just to clarify, the SQLViewstateProvider is NOT an application wide implementation. You have to create a class which inherits from the System.Web.UI.Page object and overrides the Save And Load viewstate methods of the Parent Page class. For each page that you want the viewstate to be saved on server side you then have to inherit from your newly created Page Template (Which in turn inherits and overrides the System.WEb.UI.Page class).
So it is applied on a per-page basis, not on an application-wide basis.
HEADS UP: Some controls might contain some client-side javascript code which may reference the viewstate on client-side (duh). If the viewstate is now stored on server-side you will get a null-reference exception (for instance, clicking a commandfield in a gridview). I'm working on a workaround for this problem, but unfortunately I do not have any concrete solution as of yet.
This is a bad idea, just use querystrings. I would be interested to know why they are not an option.

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