Get an instance of WebApi UrlHelper from inside an Mvc Action - asp.net

I am running WebApi and Mvc from within the same project (so they are in-process). Mvc mostly for serving assets (pages and generated downloads) and web api for ajax data requests.
In order to be RESTish, most of the WebApi requests include a set of links where are generated by the following class:
public class ApiLinkMaker
{
public ApiLinkMaker(UrlHelper url, string authority) {
this.url = url;
this.authority = authority;
}
public ApiLinkMaker(ApiController controller)
: this(controller.Url, controller.Request.RequestUri.Authority) { }
public string MakeLink(string controller, string id) {
return "//" + authority + url.Route("DefaultApi", new { controller = controller, id = id });
}
}
There's a few other methods on there, but this is really the core of things and it works fine.
Now I want to optimize a particular page. Where previously I had two requests
Download the html
Do an Ajax query to get some data (and some links)
Now I realize that for optimization purposes it is better to do just one in this case.
Download the html with the data already JSON embedded into it.
The problem is that since the html is being generated by Mvc, I cannot create an Api UrlHelper that seems to work.
I tried
var url = new UrlHelper(new HttpRequestMessage(verb, controller.Request.Url.AbsoluteUri));
if (!url.Request.Properties.ContainsKey(HttpPropertyKeys.HttpConfigurationKey)) //http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11053598/how-to-mock-the-createresponset-extension-method-on-httprequestmessage
url.Request.Properties.Add(HttpPropertyKeys.HttpConfigurationKey, new HttpConfiguration());
But this still blows up
System.ArgumentException was unhandled by user code
HResult=-2147024809
Message=A route named 'DefaultApi' could not be found in the route collection.
Parameter name: name
Source=System.Web.Http
ParamName=name
StackTrace:
at System.Web.Http.HttpRouteCollection.GetVirtualPath(HttpRequestMessage request, String name, IDictionary`2 values)
at System.Web.Http.Routing.UrlHelper.GetHttpRouteHelper(HttpRequestMessage request, String routeName, IDictionary`2 routeValues)
at System.Web.Http.Routing.UrlHelper.GetHttpRouteHelper(HttpRequestMessage request, String routeName, Object routeValues)
at System.Web.Http.Routing.UrlHelper.Route(String routeName, Object routeValues)
at MyProject.Models.ApiLinkMaker.MakeLink(String controller, String id) in w:\MyProject\Models\ApiLinkMaker.cs:line 42
...
This leads me to think that I'm going about this wrong - that I need to create the url helper from the api routing configuration somehow.

Why create one? There is an instance of the UriHelper exposed as a property on both the MVC Controller and ApiController classes.
public ActionResult Index()
{
string url = Url.RouteUrl("DefaultApi", new {httproute = "", controller = "test"});
return View();
}
Edit: Updated code. While the url helpers are different you can use the MVC url helper to resolve the web api url.
Edit2: The correct method to use if you want to get webapi routes from an Mvc UrlHelper is
string url = Url.HttpRouteUrl("DefaultApi", new {httproute = "", controller = "test"});

Related

ASP.Net MVC Controller accepting "application/x-www-form-urlencoded" content type

I inherited an old ASP.Net MVC web application. I need to modify it and add a page that can handle an incoming HTTP POST with hidden fields sent as "application/x-www-form-urlencoded" content type. This page's URL will be provided as a webhook URL to an external system that will use it to send back the control to my application and will provide some data in the form of "application/x-www-form-urlencoded" content type.
As I mentioned, this is an old MVC 5 application and is not targeting the .NET Core framework. Therefore I cannot declare my controller's method like this:
[HttpPost]
[Consumes("application/x-www-form-urlencoded")]
public void Webhook([FromForm] Response webHookResponse)]
The "Consumes" and "FromForm" attributes are available in the "Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc" namespace, but I don't have access to that in my application. Is there a different way to handle this in MVC 5?
Thanks,
Ed
You shouldn't have to do anything. The DefaultModelBinder will bind your form values to the parameter object without specifying Consumes or FromForm attributes. The same is also true for .NET Core.
Edit - code for clarity:
Also an important note: this (automatic form binding) will only work if you do NOT have the [ApiController] attribute tagging your controller.
Assume you have three hidden fields coming in, one is named foo, the other is named fudge
Either one of these will work:
[HttpPost]
public void Webhook(string foo, string fudge)
{
}
or:
public class WbResponse
{
public string foo {get; set;}
public string fudge {get; set;}
}
[HttpPost]
public void Webhook(WbResponse response)
{
}
Turns out that the request object contains all the hidden fields in its "Form" member which is a NameValueCollection. I declared my method like this:
// POST: /{Controller}/Webhook
[HttpPost]
public virtual ActionResult Webhook()
{
var requestFormFields = HttpContext.Request.Form;
and then I can access each field in the NameValueCollection by its name:
var hiddenFieldValue = requestFormFields["hiddenFieldName"];

How to obtain request parameter from query string or request body inside ASP.NET Web API 2 Controller

In PHP, one can access request property by using the $_REQUEST 'superglobal' variable.
In Java Servlet, one can also do something similar by calling getParameter(string) or getParameterValues(string) on the incoming HttpServletRequest instance.
Both of these method do not care if the data is conveyed on the query string or on the body. They are HTTP-method-agnostic-ways of getting request properties.
How to do the same using ASP.NET 4.x (not Core) Web API 2?
As far as possible, I do not want to use model binding or route parameter. I just want to use built in Properties of the ApiController to access the request parameter directly.
Here's what I'm trying to do:
public class MyController : ApiController
{
[HttpPost]
public IHttpActionResult Index()
{
// somehow obtain 'requestParam ' either from query string OR from request body
var requestParam = Request.???
return Ok(requestParam);
}
}

ASP MVC: How can I have routes with hyphens in query parameters name?

What component(s) do I need to implement and how can I hook it into the framework in order to have urls where the query parameters with names containing 2 or more words separated by hyphens?
For example:
I would have this url:
www.mysite.com/resource/i-am-looking-for?parameterOne=foo&parameterTwo=bar
I would like to have it like this:
www.mysite.com/resource/i-am-looking-for?parameter-one=foo&parameter-two=bar
My action would be something like this:
ActionResult DoSomething(string parameterOne, string parameterTwo)
The reason: user friendly urls and consistency
I need to have:
the component to integrate seamlessly with the framework URL helpers (Url.Action, Url.RouteUrl etc)
the incoming data to be bound to the action parameters (or model)
Is there a diagram where I can see the framework extensibility point in this regard?
Thank you!
public ActionResult SomeAction( string Some-Var ) {} is invalid because in C# variable names can not contain hyphens. Underscores ARE allowed, however so this IS valid public ActionResult SomeAction( string Some_Var ) {}
Now, if you relax your need to bind to strongly typed input vars to the action, you can accomplish your goal with Request.QueryString["some-var"] but you will have to handle the type conversion and error handling associated with it.
You can add Custom Value Provider Factory as shown below,
public class MyQueryStringValueProvider : NameValuePairsValueProvider
{
public QueryStringValueProvider(
HttpActionContext actionContext,
CultureInfo culture)
: base(
() =>{
var request = actionContext.ControllerContext;
foreach(var pair in request
.GetQueryNameValuePairs()){
yield return new KeyValuePair<String,String)(
Transform(pair.Key), pair.Value
);
}, culture)
{
}
private String Transform(String key){
// just removing all - , as it is case insensitive
//
return key.Replace("-","");
}
}
And you have to register your provider as shown below,
ValueProviderFactories.Factories.Add(
new MyQueryStringValueProvider());
For safe side, you can remove existing QueryStringValueProvider to avoid name conflicts for keys that does not have dash.
For dashes in Action Name, you can refer https://github.com/AtaS/lowercase-dashed-route
How about url encoding on client's side?
This way you can call controllers using general way. Please have a look one of the answers regarding that: Encode URL in JavaScript?
for example: this is your action.
public ActionResult GetNew(int id)
{
return View(news.Where(i => i.Id == id).SingleOrDefault());
}
First Step
Open App_Start>RouteConfig.cs open in your project.
public class RouteConfig
{
public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
{
routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");
routes.MapRoute(
name: "GetNew",
url: "news/new-detail/{id}",
defaults: new { controller = "News", action = "GetNew", id = ""}
);
}
}
Now run your project and write your browser http://localhost:….(different for you)/news/new-detail/1
New ID No. 1 will open.
I hope it's been helpful

Controller invoking another controller C# WebApi

I have a controller, it needs to invoke another controller. We WERE doing this work on the client. We want to do this server side for performance reasons.
Request is a POST
Request Url = "http://example.com/api/foo/1234567 (pretty standard url with binding for an id)
Request Data
{
something1:'abc',
something2:'def',
copyFromUrl : '/api/bar/7654321'
};
The copyFromUrl could be any other controller in the application. I don't want to hand jam a bunch of if statements up and down the stack to do the binding.
Complicating the issue is most controllers have three different GET signatures.
Get(sting id)
Get(sting id, string xpath)
Get()
One way of doing this, would be to basically short-circuit HttpServer and HttpClient classes. I am using here ASP.NET Web API 2, but hopefully same technique can be used with original Web API.
Here is the minimalistic working sample:
public class BarController : ApiController
{
// GET http://localhost/api/bar
[HttpGet]
public IEnumerable<string> Get()
{
return new string[] {"Foo Bar", "Progress Bar"};
}
// GET http://localhost/api/bar?bar=Towel Bar
[HttpGet]
public IEnumerable<string> GetCustomBar(string bar)
{
return new string[] {"Foo Bar", "Progress Bar", bar};
}
// POST http://localhost/api/bar?action=/api/bar?bar=Towel Bar
[HttpPost]
public HttpResponseMessage StartAction(string action)
{
var config = new HttpConfiguration();
WebApiConfig.Register(config);
var server = new HttpServer(config);
var client = new HttpClient(server);
var response = client.GetAsync("http://localhost/" + action).Result;
return response;
}
As you can see here, the first two actions differ in parameters, the third action accepts url (as in code example) that allows it to invoke any other action.
We are basically hosting a server in memory, applying same routes our real server has, and then immediately querying it.
Hard-coded localhost is actually not used run-time, the routes ignore it, but we need valid absolute URL name for the internal validation to pass.
This code is just an illustration, proof-of-concept if you may.

Can ASP.NET Routing be used to create "clean" URLs for .ashx (IHttpHander) handlers?

I have some REST services using plain old IHttpHandlers. I'd like to generate cleaner URLs, so that I don't have the .ashx in the path. Is there a way to use ASP.NET routing to create routes that map to ashx handlers? I've seen these types of routes previously:
// Route to an aspx page
RouteTable.Routes.MapPageRoute("route-name",
"some/path/{arg}",
"~/Pages/SomePage.aspx");
// Route for a WCF service
RouteTable.Routes.Add(new ServiceRoute("Services/SomeService",
new WebServiceHostFactory(),
typeof(SomeService)));
Trying to use RouteTable.Routes.MapPageRoute() generates an error (that the handler does not derive from Page). System.Web.Routing.RouteBase only seems to have 2 derived classes: ServiceRoute for services, and DynamicDataRoute for MVC. I'm not sure what MapPageRoute() does (Reflector doesn't show the method body, it just shows "Performance critical to inline this type of method across NGen image boundaries").
I see that RouteBase is not sealed, and has a relatively simple interface:
public abstract RouteData GetRouteData(HttpContextBase httpContext);
public abstract VirtualPathData GetVirtualPath(RequestContext requestContext,
RouteValueDictionary values);
So perhaps I can make my own HttpHandlerRoute. I'll give that a shot, but if anyone knows of an existing or built-in way of mapping routes to IHttpHandlers, that would be great.
Ok, I've been figuring this out since I originally asked the question, and I finally have a solution that does just what I want. A bit of up front explanation is due, however. IHttpHandler is a very basic interface:
bool IsReusable { get; }
void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context)
There is no built in property for accessing the route data, and the route data also can't be found in the context or the request. A System.Web.UI.Page object has a RouteData property , ServiceRoutes do all the work of interpreting your UriTemplates and passing the values to the correct method internally, and ASP.NET MVC provides its own way of accessing the route data. Even if you had a RouteBase that (a) determined if the incoming url was a match for your route and (b) parsed the url to extract all of the individual values to be used from within your IHttpHandler, there's no easy way to pass that route data to your IHttpHandler. If you want to keep your IHttpHandler "pure", so to speak, it takes responsibility for dealing with the url, and how to extract any values from it. The RouteBase implementation in this case is only used to determine if your IHttpHandler should be used at all.
One problem remains, however. Once the RouteBase determines that the incoming url is a match for your route, it passes off to an IRouteHandler, which creates the instances of the IHttpHandler you want to handle your request. But, once you're in your IHttpHandler, the value of context.Request.CurrentExecutionFilePath is misleading. It's the url that came from the client, minus the query string. So it's not the path to your .ashx file. And, any parts of your route that are constant (such as the name of the method) will be part of that execution file path value. This can be a problem if you use UriTemplates within your IHttpHandler to determine which specific method within your IHttpHandler should handing the request.
Example: If you had a .ashx handler at /myApp/services/myHelloWorldHandler.ashx
And you had this route that mapped to the handler: "services/hello/{name}"
And you navigated to this url, trying to call the SayHello(string name) method of your handler:
http://localhost/myApp/services/hello/SayHello/Sam
Then your CurrentExecutionFilePath would be: /myApp/services/hello/Sam. It includes parts of the route url, which is a problem. You want the execution file path to match your route url. The below implementations of RouteBase and IRouteHandler deal with this problem.
Before I paste the 2 classes, here's a very simple usage example. Note that these implementations of RouteBase and IRouteHandler will actually work for IHttpHandlers that don't even have a .ashx file, which is pretty convenient.
// A "headless" IHttpHandler route (no .ashx file required)
RouteTable.Routes.Add(new GenericHandlerRoute<HeadlessService>("services/headless"));
That will cause all incoming urls that match the "services/headless" route to be handed off to a new instance of the HeadlessService IHttpHandler (HeadlessService is just an example in this case. It would be whatever IHttpHandler implementation you wanted to pass off to).
Ok, so here are the routing class implementations, comments and all:
/// <summary>
/// For info on subclassing RouteBase, check Pro Asp.NET MVC Framework, page 252.
/// Google books link: http://books.google.com/books?id=tD3FfFcnJxYC&pg=PA251&lpg=PA251&dq=.net+RouteBase&source=bl&ots=IQhFwmGOVw&sig=0TgcFFgWyFRVpXgfGY1dIUc0VX4&hl=en&ei=z61UTMKwF4aWsgPHs7XbAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CC4Q6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=.net%20RouteBase&f=false
///
/// It explains how the asp.net runtime will call GetRouteData() for every route in the route table.
/// GetRouteData() is used for inbound url matching, and should return null for a negative match (the current requests url doesn't match the route).
/// If it does match, it returns a RouteData object describing the handler that should be used for that request, along with any data values (stored in RouteData.Values) that
/// that handler might be interested in.
///
/// The book also explains that GetVirtualPath() (used for outbound url generation) is called for each route in the route table, but that is not my experience,
/// as mine used to simply throw a NotImplementedException, and that never caused a problem for me. In my case, I don't need to do outbound url generation,
/// so I don't have to worry about it in any case.
/// </summary>
/// <typeparam name="T"></typeparam>
public class GenericHandlerRoute<T> : RouteBase where T : IHttpHandler, new()
{
public string RouteUrl { get; set; }
public GenericHandlerRoute(string routeUrl)
{
RouteUrl = routeUrl;
}
public override RouteData GetRouteData(HttpContextBase httpContext)
{
// See if the current request matches this route's url
string baseUrl = httpContext.Request.CurrentExecutionFilePath;
int ix = baseUrl.IndexOf(RouteUrl);
if (ix == -1)
// Doesn't match this route. Returning null indicates to the asp.net runtime that this route doesn't apply for the current request.
return null;
baseUrl = baseUrl.Substring(0, ix + RouteUrl.Length);
// This is kind of a hack. There's no way to access the route data (or even the route url) from an IHttpHandler (which has a very basic interface).
// We need to store the "base" url somewhere, including parts of the route url that are constant, like maybe the name of a method, etc.
// For instance, if the route url "myService/myMethod/{myArg}", and the request url were "http://localhost/myApp/myService/myMethod/argValue",
// the "current execution path" would include the "myServer/myMethod" as part of the url, which is incorrect (and it will prevent your UriTemplates from matching).
// Since at this point in the exectuion, we know the route url, we can calculate the true base url (excluding all parts of the route url).
// This means that any IHttpHandlers that use this routing mechanism will have to look for the "__baseUrl" item in the HttpContext.Current.Items bag.
// TODO: Another way to solve this would be to create a subclass of IHttpHandler that has a BaseUrl property that can be set, and only let this route handler
// work with instances of the subclass. Perhaps I can just have RestHttpHandler have that property. My reticence is that it would be nice to have a generic
// route handler that works for any "plain ol" IHttpHandler (even though in this case, you have to use the "global" base url that's stored in HttpContext.Current.Items...)
// Oh well. At least this works for now.
httpContext.Items["__baseUrl"] = baseUrl;
GenericHandlerRouteHandler<T> routeHandler = new GenericHandlerRouteHandler<T>();
RouteData rdata = new RouteData(this, routeHandler);
return rdata;
}
public override VirtualPathData GetVirtualPath(RequestContext requestContext, RouteValueDictionary values)
{
// This route entry doesn't generate outbound Urls.
return null;
}
}
public class GenericHandlerRouteHandler<T> : IRouteHandler where T : IHttpHandler, new()
{
public IHttpHandler GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext)
{
return new T();
}
}
I know this answer has been quite long winded, but it was not an easy problem to solve. The core logic was easy enough, the trick was to somehow make your IHttpHandler aware of the "base url", so that it could properly determine what parts of the url belong to the route, and what parts are actual arguments for the service call.
These classes will be used in my upcoming C# REST library, RestCake. I hope that my path down the routing rabbit hole will help anyone else who decides to RouteBase, and do cool stuff with IHttpHandlers.
I actually like Joel's solution better, as it doesn't require you to know the type of handler while you're trying to setup your routes. I'd upvote it, but alas, I haven't the reputation required.
I actually found a solution which I feel is better than both mentioned. The original source code I derived my example from can be found linked here http://weblogs.asp.net/leftslipper/archive/2009/10/07/introducing-smartyroute-a-smarty-ier-way-to-do-routing-in-asp-net-applications.aspx.
This is less code, type agnostic, and fast.
public class HttpHandlerRoute : IRouteHandler {
private String _VirtualPath = null;
public HttpHandlerRoute(String virtualPath) {
_VirtualPath = virtualPath;
}
public IHttpHandler GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext) {
IHttpHandler httpHandler = (IHttpHandler)BuildManager.CreateInstanceFromVirtualPath(_VirtualPath, typeof(IHttpHandler));
return httpHandler;
}
}
And a rough example of use
String handlerPath = "~/UploadHandler.ashx";
RouteTable.Routes.Add(new Route("files/upload", new HttpHandlerRoute(handlerPath)));
EDIT: I just edited this code because I had some issues with the old one. If you're using the old version please update.
This thread is a bit old but I just re-wrote some of the code here to do the same thing but on a more elegant way, using an extension method.
I'm using this on ASP.net Webforms, and I like to have the ashx files on a folder and being able to call them either using routing or a normal request.
So I pretty much grabbed shellscape's code and made an extension method that does the trick. At the end I felt that I should also support passing the IHttpHandler object instead of its Url, so I wrote and overload of the MapHttpHandlerRoute method for that.
namespace System.Web.Routing
{
public class HttpHandlerRoute<T> : IRouteHandler where T: IHttpHandler
{
private String _virtualPath = null;
public HttpHandlerRoute(String virtualPath)
{
_virtualPath = virtualPath;
}
public HttpHandlerRoute() { }
public IHttpHandler GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext)
{
return Activator.CreateInstance<T>();
}
}
public class HttpHandlerRoute : IRouteHandler
{
private String _virtualPath = null;
public HttpHandlerRoute(String virtualPath)
{
_virtualPath = virtualPath;
}
public IHttpHandler GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext)
{
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(_virtualPath))
{
return (IHttpHandler)System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.CreateInstanceFromVirtualPath(_virtualPath, typeof(IHttpHandler));
}
else
{
throw new InvalidOperationException("HttpHandlerRoute threw an error because the virtual path to the HttpHandler is null or empty.");
}
}
}
public static class RoutingExtension
{
public static void MapHttpHandlerRoute(this RouteCollection routes, string routeName, string routeUrl, string physicalFile, RouteValueDictionary defaults = null, RouteValueDictionary constraints = null)
{
var route = new Route(routeUrl, defaults, constraints, new HttpHandlerRoute(physicalFile));
routes.Add(routeName, route);
}
public static void MapHttpHandlerRoute<T>(this RouteCollection routes, string routeName, string routeUrl, RouteValueDictionary defaults = null, RouteValueDictionary constraints = null) where T : IHttpHandler
{
var route = new Route(routeUrl, defaults, constraints, new HttpHandlerRoute<T>());
routes.Add(routeName, route);
}
}
}
I'm putting it inside the same namespace of all the native routing objects so it will be automatically available.
So to use this you just have to call:
// using the handler url
routes.MapHttpHandlerRoute("DoSomething", "Handlers/DoSomething", "~/DoSomething.ashx");
Or
// using the type of the handler
routes.MapHttpHandlerRoute<MyHttpHanler>("DoSomething", "Handlers/DoSomething");
Enjoy,
Alex
Yeah, I noticed that, too. Perhaps there is a built-in ASP.NET way to do this, but the trick for me was to create a new class derived from IRouteHandler:
using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Reflection;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Routing;
namespace MyNamespace
{
class GenericHandlerRouteHandler : IRouteHandler
{
private string _virtualPath;
private Type _handlerType;
private static object s_lock = new object();
public GenericHandlerRouteHandler(string virtualPath)
{
_virtualPath = virtualPath;
}
#region IRouteHandler Members
public System.Web.IHttpHandler GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext)
{
ResolveHandler();
IHttpHandler handler = (IHttpHandler)Activator.CreateInstance(_handlerType);
return handler;
}
#endregion
private void ResolveHandler()
{
if (_handlerType != null)
return;
lock (s_lock)
{
// determine physical path of ashx
string path = _virtualPath.Replace("~/", HttpRuntime.AppDomainAppPath);
if (!File.Exists(path))
throw new FileNotFoundException("Generic handler " + _virtualPath + " could not be found.");
// parse the class name out of the .ashx file
// unescaped reg-ex: (?<=Class=")[a-zA-Z\.]*
string className;
Regex regex = new Regex("(?<=Class=\")[a-zA-Z\\.]*");
using (var sr = new StreamReader(path))
{
string str = sr.ReadToEnd();
Match match = regex.Match(str);
if (match == null)
throw new InvalidDataException("Could not determine class name for generic handler " + _virtualPath);
className = match.Value;
}
// get the class type from the name
Assembly[] asms = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies();
foreach (Assembly asm in asms)
{
_handlerType = asm.GetType(className);
if (_handlerType != null)
break;
}
if (_handlerType == null)
throw new InvalidDataException("Could not find type " + className + " in any loaded assemblies.");
}
}
}
}
To create a route for an .ashx:
IRouteHandler routeHandler = new GenericHandlerRouteHandler("~/somehandler.ashx");
Route route = new Route("myroute", null, null, null, routeHandler);
RouteTable.Routes.Add(route);
The code above may need to be enhanced to work with your route arguments, but it's starting point. Comments welcome.
All of these answers are very good. I love the simplicity of Mr. Meacham's GenericHandlerRouteHandler<T> class. It is a great idea to eliminate an unnecessary reference to a virtual path if you know the specific HttpHandler class. The GenericHandlerRoute<T> class is not needed, however. The existing Route class which derives from RouteBase already handles all of the complexity of route matching, parameters, etc., so we can just use it along with GenericHandlerRouteHandler<T>.
Below is a combined version with a real-life usage example that includes route parameters.
First are the route handlers. There are two included, here -- both with the same class name, but one that is generic and uses type information to create an instance of the specific HttpHandler as in Mr. Meacham's usage, and one that uses a virtual path and BuildManager to create an instance of the appropriate HttpHandler as in shellscape's usage. The good news is that .NET allows both to live side by side just fine, so we can just use whichever we want and can switch between them as we wish.
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Compilation;
using System.Web.Routing;
public class HttpHandlerRouteHandler<T> : IRouteHandler where T : IHttpHandler, new() {
public HttpHandlerRouteHandler() { }
public IHttpHandler GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext) {
return new T();
}
}
public class HttpHandlerRouteHandler : IRouteHandler {
private string _VirtualPath;
public HttpHandlerRouteHandler(string virtualPath) {
this._VirtualPath = virtualPath;
}
public IHttpHandler GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext) {
return (IHttpHandler) BuildManager.CreateInstanceFromVirtualPath(this._VirtualPath, typeof(IHttpHandler));
}
}
Let's assume that we created an HttpHandler that streams documents to users from a resource outside our virtual folder, maybe even from a database, and that we want to fool the user's browser into believing that we are directly serving a specific file rather than simply providing a download (i.e., allow the browser's plug-ins to handle the file rather than forcing the user to save the file). The HttpHandler may expect a document id with which to locate the document to provide, and may expect a file name to provide to the browser -- one that may differ from the file name used on the server.
The following shows the registration of the route used to accomplish this with a DocumentHandler HttpHandler:
routes.Add("Document", new Route("document/{documentId}/{*fileName}", new HttpHandlerRouteHandler<DocumentHandler>()));
I used {*fileName} rather than just {fileName} to allow the fileName parameter to act as an optional catch-all parameter.
To create a URL for a file served by this HttpHandler, we can add the following static method to a class where such a method would be appropriate, such as in the HttpHandler class, itself:
public static string GetFileUrl(int documentId, string fileName) {
string mimeType = null;
try { mimeType = MimeMap.GetMimeType(Path.GetExtension(fileName)); }
catch { }
RouteValueDictionary documentRouteParameters = new RouteValueDictionary { { "documentId", documentId.ToString(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture) }
, { "fileName", DocumentHandler.IsPassThruMimeType(mimeType) ? fileName : string.Empty } };
return RouteTable.Routes.GetVirtualPath(null, "Document", documentRouteParameters).VirtualPath;
}
I omitted the definitions of MimeMap and and IsPassThruMimeType to keep this example simple. But these are intended to determine whether or not specific file types should provide their file names directly in the URL, or rather in a Content-Disposition HTTP header. Some file extensions could be blocked by IIS or URL Scan, or could cause code to execute that might cause problems for users -- especially if the source of the file is another user who is malicious. You could replace this logic with some other filtering logic, or omit such logic entirely if you are not exposed to this type of risk.
Since in this particular example the file name may be omitted from the URL, then, obviously, we must retrieve the file name from somewhere. In this particular example, the file name can be retrieved by performing a look-up using document id, and including a file name in the URL is intended solely to improve the user's experience. So, the DocumentHandler HttpHandler can determine if a file name was provided in the URL, and if it was not, then it can simply add a Content-Disposition HTTP header to the response.
Staying on topic, the important part of the above code block is the usage of RouteTable.Routes.GetVirtualPath() and the routing parameters to generate a URL from the Route object that we created during the route registration process.
Here's a watered-down version of the DocumentHandler HttpHandler class (much omitted for the sake of clarity). You can see that this class uses route parameters to retrieve the document id and the file name when it can; otherwise, it will attempt to retrieve the document id from a query string parameter (i.e., assuming that routing was not used).
public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context) {
try {
context.Response.Clear();
// Get the requested document ID from routing data, if routed. Otherwise, use the query string.
bool isRouted = false;
int? documentId = null;
string fileName = null;
RequestContext requestContext = context.Request.RequestContext;
if (requestContext != null && requestContext.RouteData != null) {
documentId = Utility.ParseInt32(requestContext.RouteData.Values["documentId"] as string);
fileName = Utility.Trim(requestContext.RouteData.Values["fileName"] as string);
isRouted = documentId.HasValue;
}
// Try the query string if no documentId obtained from route parameters.
if (!isRouted) {
documentId = Utility.ParseInt32(context.Request.QueryString["id"]);
fileName = null;
}
if (!documentId.HasValue) { // Bad request
// Response logic for bad request omitted for sake of simplicity
return;
}
DocumentDetails documentInfo = ... // Details of loading this information omitted
if (context.Response.IsClientConnected) {
string fileExtension = string.Empty;
try { fileExtension = Path.GetExtension(fileName ?? documentInfo.FileName); } // Use file name provided in URL, if provided, to get the extension.
catch { }
// Transmit the file to the client.
FileInfo file = new FileInfo(documentInfo.StoragePath);
using (FileStream fileStream = file.OpenRead()) {
// If the file size exceeds the threshold specified in the system settings, then we will send the file to the client in chunks.
bool mustChunk = fileStream.Length > Math.Max(SystemSettings.Default.MaxBufferedDownloadSize * 1024, DocumentHandler.SecondaryBufferSize);
// WARNING! Do not ever set the following property to false!
// Doing so causes each chunk sent by IIS to be of the same size,
// even if a chunk you are writing, such as the final chunk, may
// be shorter than the rest, causing extra bytes to be written to
// the stream.
context.Response.BufferOutput = true;
context.Response.ContentType = MimeMap.GetMimeType(fileExtension);
context.Response.AddHeader("Content-Length", fileStream.Length.ToString(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture));
if ( !isRouted
|| string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(fileName)
|| string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(fileExtension)) { // If routed and a file name was provided in the route, then the URL will appear to point directly to a file, and no file name header is needed; otherwise, add the header.
context.Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", string.Format("attachment; filename={0}", HttpUtility.UrlEncode(documentInfo.FileName)));
}
int bufferSize = DocumentHandler.SecondaryBufferSize;
byte[] buffer = new byte[bufferSize];
int bytesRead = 0;
while ((bytesRead = fileStream.Read(buffer, 0, bufferSize)) > 0 && context.Response.IsClientConnected) {
context.Response.OutputStream.Write(buffer, 0, bytesRead);
if (mustChunk) {
context.Response.Flush();
}
}
}
}
}
catch (Exception e) {
// Error handling omitted from this example.
}
}
This example uses some additional custom classes, such as a Utility class to simplify some trivial tasks. But hopefully you can weed through that. The only really important part in this class with regard to the current topic, of course, is the retrieval of the route parameters from context.Request.RequestContext.RouteData. But I've seen several posts elsewhere asking how to stream large files using an HttpHandler without chewing up server memory, so it seemed like a good idea to combine examples.

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