How to receive and process post data from a thirdparty company - asp.net

I am using a thirdparty credicard processing company. I am sending amount to pay creditcard number etc to them. They said they will postback the results such as confirmation number to a url provided by me. I have to save the confirmation number in my database. Mine is an asp.net web application. I am wondering what will be best way to provide a url. Should I give an aspx page or create a http handler which will process the data from the third party company?
Thanks

Definitely a generic http handler (.ashx), because it's a lot more lightweight than .aspx.
The basic idea: use .ashx when you don't need to display a web page to end user, otherwise use .aspx.

Should I give an aspx page or create a http handler ... ?
Neither, use a WCF service.
WCF service to accept a post encoded multipart/form-data

Related

Server.Transfer from ASP.NET to ASP

No duplicate of “Server.Transfer from ASP to ASP.Net” ;-)
On an IIS web server (running Classic ASP), I have a local URL that a user is remotely redirected to. Presumably, this call is made with data in the query string or transmitted through POST data. When this request is made, I need to remove this data (especially the query string) server-side, so none will be visible to the client.
For example, the user is led to http://example.com/dir/?data=payload. This is what requested, and this is what the user’s browser will display. Now I need the request resource to strip QueryString and Form data, so that the user ends up in e.g. http://example.com/dir/.
On MSDN, they have HttpServerUtility.Transfer, which adds a boolean to the classic Server.Transfer method allowing to preserve or clear data. However, when I try this in an aspx file transfering to an asp file, I get a 0x80004005 HTTP exception (“No http handler was found for request type 'GET'”).
Is it possible at all to “redirect” from an ASP.NET file to a Classic one?
Is there another, better way to remove request data server-side?
My options would be:
Use a redirect on the page without querystrings: Response.Redirect() This will clear post data as well.
Do a HTTP Request to scrape the HTML of the other page, and view it in your current page.
I would probably do option #1

Intercept http request for the files on file server

http://myfileserver/images/car/chevrolet.gif
I have this file server holding the files such as images, doc files etc. Now i want to intercept the http request and based on the file extension i want perform some action such as redirection to some other webpage.
What is the best and the easier way to accomplish this thing? I am using asp.net framework for my applications.
Pls suggest the approach.
Thx
If you are looking to intercept the request for specific file types, then go with an Http Handler. Here is the MSDN link explaining their usage - Http Handlers
In the WCF world if you're looking to handle an HTTP request with a different option based on the requested filetype, you may want to look into adding an IDispatchOperationSelector, which allows the service to route the code through a different operation. The default HTTP implementation is the WebHTTPDispatchOperationSelector, which is explained pretty well here and here.
If you want to remain in the Asp.Net world, I'd recomend going with custom message handlers. Here's an article by Mike Wasson explaining how these work & where they fall in the Asp stack.

Respond to HTTP Post in ASP.Net

I'd like to respond to an HTTP POST in an ASP.Net page.
I've found loads of example of sending an WebRequest, and I can successfully pick that up and read it in my Page_Load.
However, I'd like to then put some data back in the Response, but I can't find any examples of how to do this.
The actual requirement is for an external site to POST to a page and receive back a GUID for their records.
Any help very gratefully received.
It sounds like you should be using an HttpHandler and not a Page.
You create an HttpHandler by implementing the IHttpHandler interface. When implementing the IHttpHandler interface, you have full control over the response in the ProcessRequest method.
Typically ASP.NET page will put its rendered markup (html generated by controls present on it) in response. Going by your requirement, I would suggest you to use generic HTTP handler (.ashx file) that will give you complete control over your response.
See this article for quickstart with ashx: http://www.brainbell.com/tutorials/ASP/Generic_Handlers_(ASHX_Files).html

Receive requests with a .asmx file or a .aspx file?

I'm setting up my site to receive info from people via text message. The way it works is they text a number, that service then sends an HTTP POST to a url I specify. I've heard that .asmx files are better than .aspx files because they don't go through the whole page lifecycle. However, I don't really understand how to get a .asmx file running, and can you even call it with a POST, ie, www.mysite.com/webservice.asmx? I know I can make it work with a .aspx file, but I wanted to check to see if there was a better way before I undertake this endeavor.
Thanks for your insight!
While any extension can be mapped to any handler in ASP.NET, by default .aspx is mapped to page handler and .asmx is mapped to Web service handler. I think you are looking for .ashx which represents a generic simple handler. You just need to implement ProcessRequest method of the IHttpHandler interface after adding one to your project (Add New Item -> Generic Handler).
The .ashx works well if you want to manually process the request. Only if you want to provide a Web service (e.g. SOAP), you should go with .asmx. As a consequence, the best solution depends on the format of the HTTP POST request they send. If they send raw data in POST with their own specific protocol, go with .ashx. Otherwise, if they are using a standard RPC (SOAP, XML-RPC, ...) protocol, .asmx is probably better.
Create an .asmx file with Visual Studio. It should create a template with a HelloWorld method. Browse to it with your favorite browser and you'll actually get an explanation on how to post requests to it using various methods.
There is another type you haven't mentioned: ashx. However, in your case, a webservice (asmx) would make sense.

What is the difference between HttpHandler and a Web User Control and when to use each one?

I've been using user controls extensively but never use a HttpHandler and was wondering if I am doing something suboptimal or wrong
Unfortunately your question is a little like "Should I use a sandwich or a cement mixer". HttpHandlers and User controls are completely different things.
HttpHandlers are used to process HTTP requests. For example, if you wanted to dynamically create an RSS feed, you could write an HTTP handler that handles all requests for ".rss" files, creates the output and sends it back to the user.
User controls are used within ASPX pages to encapsulate units of functionality that you want to re-use accross many pages.
Chances are, if you're using user controls successfully, you don't want to use HttpHandlers!
Basically a user control is a piece of server logic and UI. An HTTP Handler is only a piece of logic that is executed when a resource on your server is requested. For example you may decide to handle requests for images sent to your server through your own handler and serve images from a database instead of the file system. However, in this case there's no interface that the user sees and when he visits a URL on your server he would get the response you constructed in your own handler. Handlers are usually done for specific extensions and HTTP request types (POST, GET). Here's some more info on MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms227675(VS.80).aspx
Expect a better answer (probably before I finish typing this) but as a quick summary.
A user control is something that can be added to a page.
A HttpHandler can be used instead of a page.
Just to clarify the question. I was reading the Hanselman post
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/CompositingTwoImagesIntoOneFromTheASPNETServerSide.aspx
and thinking that I would never solved the problem with a HttpHandler, maybe with a simple page returning a binary content.
This led me to think that I should add HttpHandler to my developer tool belt.
Even an Asp.Net page is an HttpHandler.
public class Page : TemplateControl, IHttpHandler
A user control actually resides within the asp.net aspx page.

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