I have a search page published in a cms that locates database driven pages hosted in but not managed by the cms.
The search form consists of a number of different buttons and dropdowns. It works with a postback.
In the results listing, there are links to the resulting pages.
Is it possible (without changing from postback to a GET form) to make the back button work in IE such that I can click one of the result items and then get back to the result listing?
Currently when I click back I get the "Web page has expired".
Is it possible to do something smart with headers or redirects? I want to be able to history back to the search result in IE 8 and 9.
No, you will need to follow a POST-REDIRECT-GET pattern instead.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post/Redirect/Get
http://blog.simonlovely.com/archive/2008/11/26/post-redirect-get-pattern-in-mvc.aspx (shameless plug for implementing in MS MVC framework)
Related
there is this site https://www.delinski.at/ and it has a nice form where you can pick some values from dropdowns like Date, Number of Persons etc., and then submit the form. It redirects and I see the values on the redirected page link as parameters (if I have changed the defaults).
I searched for and tried several Form Plugins which all do not seem to work - most recent one (Form Maker) lets me design the form as I want but at the end I realized when I click on Submit, the values are not transfered to the target page (confirmed by Form Maker Support as work as intended). It's confusing because actually that should be a basic funciontality of a HTML form, right?
So I want to know if there are plugins where I can get a similar look&feel like the example given above.
That site is a Static Site Generated framework not WordPress. That site would also be very expensive to build cause that is all coded, and very well:)
You are not actually seeing a form there at all that is just how PHP natively uses the URL to navigate via a button.
Almost all the form plug ins for WP use the database write now and do not pass the parameters of the entered form as a php _ POST with a redirect.
I kind of think what you really are looking for is a faceted search feature
One of the best that comes to my mind is https://facetwp.com/demo/cars/?_vehicle_type=truck
Notice the car icons those are actually search buttons:) Of course you will have to build a template to do that neat stuff on the SSG site you linked but...
here is a really informative write upon how it works to get started.
I'm bulding an ASP.NET website just to test my skills, and I'm using lots of callbacks that doesn't require a page refresh, and the URL doesn't change. In this example, assume I'm bulding a web-based Outlook with a treeview, a grid, and a detail pane.
Is there a standard (published or assumed) that says I should postback, or even update my URL from time to time?
The Standard you are probably looking for is called usability. DHTML, Ajax, or whatever you want to call it is fine until it breaks the users expectation of browser behavior. When the back button fails to work, and users can't bookmark the page exactly as they expect, you're doing it wrong.
I don't know about an official standard, but you may want to check out Gmail to see a good example of how something similar was done. The URL changes on the site much more often than the page refreshes.
In my asp.net 2005 app, I would like conceal the app structure from the user. Currently, the end user can learn intimate details of my web app as they navigate and watch the url change. I don't want the end user to know about my application structure. I would like the browser url to not change if possible. Please advise.
thanks
E.A.
URL rewriting is the only one that can provide any kind of real concealment.
Just moving the requests to AJAX or to frames, means anyone (well, more advanced users) can still see those requests being fired, just not in the address bar.
Simplest solution is to use frames - a single frame that holds your application and is 100% * 100%. The URL will not change though the underlying URL can still be seen via "View Frame info", however only advanced users will even figure that out.
In your pages, make sure that they are contained inside the holding frame.
A couple of possibilities.
1) use AJAX to power everything. This will mean that the user never leaves the home page
2) use postbacks to power everything. In this, you'd have all those pages be user controls which you progrmattically hide or show.
3) URL rewriting (especially if this is asp.net 3.0 or later)
My site uses url parameters to dynamically load ascx files into a single main aspx. So if I get 'page_id=123' on the query string, I load the corresponding ascx. The url changes, but only the query string - the domain part remains the same.
If you want the url to remain precisely the same at all times, then frames (per Oded) or ajax (per Stephen) are probably the only ways to do it.
Short answer: use URL encryption
A simple & straight article: http://devcity.net/PrintArticle.aspx?ArticleID=47
and another article: https://web.archive.org/web/20210610035204/http://aspnet.4guysfromrolla.com/articles/083105-1.aspx
HTH
All,
This would seem like a fairly basic asp.net question - but in all my years of coding, I've never really thought about it.
Say you have a asp.net 2.0 site with only a masterpage and a default.aspx and its a blog that saves all the data into the database. Links on the side are generated automatically. So ... the URL is always just http://www.XXXXX.com/default.aspx.
So, with that being the case, what do you need to do so that ... say google ... knows about all the different blog entries and links directly to the entries instead of just the base URL?
Is it as simple as changing the forms method to: method="get"?
Thanks, L. Lee Saunders
There are at least two solutions:
Search engines understand query strings, so just add the article IDs to the URLs in your anchor tags -- no need to even use a form control.
Use URL rewriting to expose one set of URLs to the outside world (like /article-title/1234/) in your anchor tags, and then modify the URL to be default.aspx when it arrives at your site; the page could then pull the article to be displayed from any number of places, including but not limited to a query string.
You could have a REST webservice so that you can just use urls to navigate the site, and perhaps have a front page with some new posts, so that the spider can navigate the site..
As an example, look at the urls for SO, it is easy for a spider to navigate this database-driven website.
Create a page that just serves up XML Sitemap (the data obviously being pulled from your database) and submit the sitemap to Google.
Google will then index any links in your sitemap.
(This assumes that these is some difference between each article - e.g. a Querystring key/value).
Useful Link(s):
Web Sitemap Generators
Google Sitemap Validator
Google Sitemaps for ASP.NET 2.0 (there are about a gazillion interesting links off the back of this as well).
some sort of URL rewriting may be an answer
I wouldn't recommend a postback for your situation, it can get ugly for refreshes etc. So, yes, change the method to "get"
Then, say your page of, default.aspx?postid=12345 will get translated into /mm/dd/yy/this-is-my-post.aspx
I use asp.net 3.5 and have also begun looking at 3.5 sp1
I like the clean urls that mvc tends to have but use asp.net webforms for my primary development. I normally use a url rewriter in order to accomplish this type stuff. When I say clean urls I mean like /products to get a list of products and /products/Product_One to look at the info about product called Product_One. I've used this on sites where the listing is on one page and when you pick the item it goes to a different page that shows the info about the item selected.
but
I also like the way that the update panel works and changing stuff on screen with out flashing the screen. When I do this I tend to have a list on the left with the different items that are selectable and then have on the left the data about the selected item, then I use an update panel so that when the item on the left is selected it's data shows up on the left without flashing.
I need opinions on what you all think of the two different methods of displaying a list and seeing the item that is selected's data.
1) Which is better in your opinion?
2) What do you all do to display a list and show the data on one of the items?
3) Is there another way of doing this?
4) Is it possible to combine the update panel method and the nice urls? (i.e. change the url to match the url that would get you to the current displayed data even though the update panel was used, and add to the history the new clean url for the current page)
What you are referring to is AJAX URL history management but you will not be able to modify the URL besides the "#" anchor.
At least not without reloading the page.