ASP.NET validation issue - DropDownList being populated dynamically on client - asp.net

I'm populating a DropDownList using JS on the client and validating with a RequiredFieldValidator.
This works fine on the client but the Page.IsValid consistently comes back false on the server.
Is this because the selected value wasn't in the DropDownList when it was first served to the page?
What's the easiest way around this? (I need to leave server validation turned on)

Is this because the selected value
wasn't in the DropDownList when it was
first served to the page?
Yes. You'll probably notice that your dropdownlist will contain no items when you do your postback, and yes, this is because you're adding your items on the client side. Any items that you add to a control on the client are totally unknown to the server. Therefore, your server validation will always fail, since that field is required.
In fact, adding items dynamically with client script will trigger EventValidation to complain that there is a possible security problem, and you'll have had to set EnableEventValidation to false in your <%# Page %> directive to be able to post.
The best way around this is to either
Generate your items on the server side, or
Not use a server control for this (use a regular non-asp.net select list) and manually validate it on the server by looking at the posted values.

Related

Failed to load viewstate. The control tree into which viewstate is being loaded

I am receiving the following error message after an HTTP POST on an ASP.NET form hosted inside a UserControl:
Failed to load viewstate. The control tree into which viewstate is being loaded must match the control tree that was used to save viewstate during the previous request. For example, when adding controls dynamically, the controls added during a post-back must match the type and position of the controls added during the initial request.
Here's additional info:
I'm running .NET 4.5 RC
It's an Umbraco 4.7-based website
On my local dev machine the form works perfectly
This error only occurs on the staging server which has .NET 4.5 (only), MSSQL 2012 Express, IIS 7.5, Windows 7 (I know, it's not a real server yet, one day maybe...)
The server is not part of a web farm (or garden, tho that should be irrevelant)
The user control does render controls dynamically
I have applied all the latest service packs.
I have run out of ideas now! I have even restarted it and also performed a richual over the server involving a song and a special dance to no avail.
What is important when you are adding controls dynamically is on which event you are adding them.
If you added controls on events that occur after load, they will be part of the viewstate you send to the client.
You will have to add those controls again before LoadViewState is called.
If you run into cases where the decision of which controls to add is itself stored in the ViewState or the value of a control, then remember even before the ViewState is loaded, this data is available in Request.Params
Refer the asp.net page life cycle
I just added EnableViewState="false" to my page placeholder and its gone. Hope it works for u as well.
This Error Mainly Occurs during View state Change: From One Template To other Template like in case of Item Template, Edit Item Template, in Controls like Form View, List Views, Detail View, Grid View in ASP .net (all frameworks);
While Changing from control states say Item Template ---> Edit Template
the followings were going to alter
1) Controls will change (its ID & states)
2) Its Positions will change.
While Transformation of view if any post back occurs you will get Error as
Failed to load viewstate. The control tree into which viewstate is
being loaded....
if you are using separate control for data-binding like (button,link_button_Image_button events) you will get this error reported !
To avoid this error >>> Once state changes from one template to other within method you call data source binding ( Don't call during click or any post backing events ).
OK, so the answer is literally: "Set up a new server with all the same software as the last one and try again" and it works now.
I add "name" attribute with the same value as id, then this problem is gone.
<input type="button" id="extractBomInfoBtn" name="extractBomInfoBtn" value="Extract" class="button textonly" />
I had the same issue. This issue was at client end but it didn't occur in my local system.
After hours of googling, i had written EnableViewState="false" to my table tag in aspx page which has all the dynamic controls and then i removed all the viewstate variables and instead i created some hidden textboxes in the aspx page and accepted DB values into them in code behind and used them throughout my code. It then solved my problem.
But still, i couldn't figure out what was exactly the problem.
In my case I was manipulating the .Text property of a asp:Literal on page load which was causing the issue. In all other cases this never caused me a viewstate error but in this particular case I was changing the .Text value to an html element.
The following caused the error:
<asp:Literal ID="SvgIcon" runat="server" />
SvgIcon.Text = "<svg version=\"1.1\" id=\"Layer_1\" bla bla />"
I was able to resolve the error by adding EnableViewState="false" explicitly to the control:
<asp:Literal ID="SvgIcon" runat="server" EnableViewState="false" />
Check if you have the binding method of the control directly in your page load event. This can cause this problem.
You can add new PlaceHolder per UserControls
OR
You can set enableviewstate=false on the control , if you dont need viewstate
In my case I had a grid view with (OnPageIndexChanging) event
and when I click on a page nothing will happen until I click it twice!
I was refreshing the data source before setting new page index.
This is what I was doing wrong
grd.DataSource = data;
grd.DataBind();
grd.PageIndex = e.NewPageIndex;
This is the right way
grd.PageIndex = e.NewPageIndex;
grd.DataSource = data;
grd.DataBind();
This can happen if you override SaveViewState in your control but don't override LoadViewState.
So I actually ended up discovering that the list of entities I was binding to was not in the same order as the controls in ViewState! I'm still working thru a cleaner solution, but my code is working with ViewStateEnabled = true by having the method which reconstructs my dynamic controls (called from Page_Load) do it differently if !IsPostBack.
Ultimately, I will probably need to fix my sorting algorithm for my nested dynamic controls, but suffice it to say: if you are using the same pattern as I am, of using a List to generate/bind to dynamic controls, and that order is fluid or changing, try comparing Request.Params to find the keys that are relevant to your control hierarchy, and see if they match the order of your List. That solved my issue. Kudos to #nunespascal!
In short, I am dynamically generating all but one tab in an AjaxToolkit tab control, and then populating that with a couple layers deep of placeholders and regular controls (textboxes, dropdownlists, etc), so that's why it's complicated to get the order of everything correct.
Although this is very old question, I had visited this as I got the similar issue. But my issue was generated just because I have added a javascript code in Master page in head tag. That javascript code is reading a value of Session["KeyName"] ,
Code is like below -
$(document).ready(function () {
var allowOpenInNewTab = false;
allowOpenInNewTab = '<%# Convert.ToString(Session["AllowOpenInNewTab"]).ToLower() %>' == 'true';
if (!allowOpenInNewTab && window.sessionStorage.tabId != '1') {
alert("This page is not allowed to be open in another tab, sorry we can not load the page!!");
}
});
When I remove above code then everything was running smoothly but if I keep adding this part of code, it was giving this error of
Failed to load viewstate. The control tree into which viewstate is being loaded must match the control tree that was used to save viewstate...
Finally I found the solution like if I move my javascript code from head to just before the end of the body tag.
So solution that worked for me was moving javascript code (which is reading Session value from Server tags) to just before end of body tag.

How to disable server side validation for a certain field?

In my apsx page, I have a textbox that allows user input html tags. But it will get following validation error, "A potentially dangerous Request.Form value was detected from the client ...". I tried several ways to prevent it, none of them works except setting ValidateRequest to false. Now I am thinking is there any way I can disable server side validation for this textbox. I know in MVC there is couple of ways. But I am not using MVC. My page is just regular aspx, is there any way to do that?
I tried to set CausesValidation to False for my TextBox, didn't work, still getting the error.
Have a look here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bt244wbb.aspx
You can disable on a per control basis.

How does RequiredFieldValidator automatically stops database being updated?

My previous impression of RequiredFieldValidator and similar have been that they show you an error label and set Page.IsValid false and that is it. Meaning they leave the rest of the task (preventing the use of wrong input data) to you. But today I have realised say if you use a DetailsView to insert a new record to a database, and you use validators to check the TextBoxes inside the DetailsView, they automatically prevent the database from being updated.
I would like to know how this is implemented behind the scene. I'm guessing it aborted the Page Lifecycle at Validator.PreRender event, so that database connections at later stage could not be reached? I'm probably wrong.
I'm trying to use Reflector to get inside the RequiredFieldValidator to see how it is implemented, but I don't really know where to look. Can someone give some hints?
This article explains the validation in detail for ASP.NET.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa479045.aspx
Validation can be both Server side and/or client side. If used, client side validation doesn't let user submit the form until it is validated. Client side validation is implemented using JavaScript and DOM. Every submit button is wired by the framework to check validation before doing post back.
Server side validation works differently. The event chain is extended between page load and event procedure call. The validation results are set, which can be interpreted by any event procedure.
In your situation I guess you have client validation on - which it prevents Form from being submitted to server and that's why no actual update to database is done.
EDIT: DetailsView control does support server side validation controls. Follow this link for details http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.web.ui.webcontrols.detailsview.aspx#security

Hacking DropDownList value

I've got a DropDownList and I'm trying to prevent it from being used as an attack vector. Can I assume that the user is unable to actually change the values of the DDL and postback to the server? At the moment, I get this ASP.NET error message thrown if I try and change the packet after submission:
For security purposes, this feature verifies that arguments to postback or callback events originate from the server control that originally rendered them.
Am I right in thinking that this is due to the integrity being compromised in the viewstate hash? Can this be bypassed?
Thanks
Actually you should be able to assume that the dropdown list options have not been changed client side as long as the page has EnableEventValidation = true (which is default although you can disable it per page or in the web.config). If a new value is added to your dropdownlist client side, and a postback occurs an error will occur unless you register this new value for event validation (http://odetocode.com/blogs/scott/archive/2006/03/21/asp-net-event-validation-and-invalid-callback-or-postback-argument-again.aspx)
No, you can't assume that.
You should always consider that all input is untrusted, and treat it appropriately (make sure it is what it should be, and that it is of the right type, and that the current user (or whatever) has access to it, and so on).

Using JSON or postback method?

I need to develop a page which has 2 dropdownlist.
Options of dropdownlist 2 are based on selection of dropdownlist 1.
I have 2 methods to change the dropdownlist 2. What will you choose?
1:
Postback when users select dropdownlist 1 and change dropdownlist 2.
Pros:
Can use the postback feature, can use the asp.net validator
Cons:
Need to communicate with server (more traffic)
Users will see the page loading in the status bar.
2:
Get all the data (not very much data) in a JSON object when loading the page and change the dropdownlist 2 using javascript.
Pros:
Don't need to communicate with server(less traffic)
Cons:
Can't use the postback feature and validator and more troublesome to write server validation.
Also, I usually write the JSON object to the page as follows:
var locations = <asp:Literal runat="server" id="litLocation" text="[]" />
And then set the "litLocation" in page_load after the data is processed by datacontractjsonserializer.
Do you do it in the same way?
I prefer the second option, no need to reload the whole page just to refresh one dropdown list. I'd also do the client side dev in jQuery, much easier. You can do the client side validation for the change event of the first dropdown in jQuery as well, and keep the form submit validation in ASP.NET.
Have a look at the selectChain plugin for jQuery (demo's etc here).
Why not have your javascript call the server when the select box is clicked on, using a GET method, and fill in the select box, using json as the response, then, when an option is picked then fill in the second select box with another ajax request.
This would be scalable, in that if you want to add more options you just change the server, and everything is centralized.
You will need to validate when the form is submitted anyway, as it is possible to change a value of a form to something illegal using some debugging tools, such as Firebug, so never trust anything from a webpage until you have validated it.
So, no point worrying about the validation until the form is actually submitted.

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