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.
Related
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.
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
I have a web cam that can send an image via HTTP PUT to a web server. I'd like to process this in ASP.NET MVC, but it doesn't natively support PUT. Is there any way to trick it into treating the request as a POST? I'm looking to get the Request.Form and Request.Files properties populated.
ASP.NET MVC supports PUT requests by putting the HttpPut attribute on the action.
(In earlier versions you might need to use the AcceptVerbs attribute...)
Are you sure it doesn't support HTTP Put? I see that it is listed within the HttpVerbs Enumeration: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.web.mvc.httpverbs.aspx
All you should have to do is ensure that you have decorated your action appropriately.
This does not appear to be possible. I've just used the Request.InputStream to read in a bitmap directly.
So... I've got an ASP.NET app. Let's assume I configure IIS to always point to the same file, index.aspx. Let's say I want to write all my code in C# and then return some HTML I generated in the C#. How do I do that?
Would I just have 1 file with 1 line of code,
<%# Page CodeBehind="mycode.cs"
Is it necessary to have such a "useless" file? I can't direct the request straight into the code-behind?
Secondly, where are some good tutorials on code-behinds? Specifically, I see this Page_Load event that I guess gets called automatically?
Are there other events? What are they?
Also, how would I access things like POST data, or the request URL?
How would I return a HTML response? Or a 404?
I'm seeing a lot of tutorials on "inline" ASP, but I don't really care about that.
Sounds like you want a generic handler. They are available in the New Item... dialog. This will give you a .ashx file where you can handle incoming web requests just like you would in your scenario, but in a cleaner way. Using these you can return any kind of HTTP response, including HTTP errors. You have full access to the HTTP context for POST data, URL parameters, cookies, etc. See more here.
Another alternative is to implement IHttpHandler yourself, although with generic handlers there isn't much point in going through the effort.
Are there other events? What are they?
There is a whole lot of Events available when you inherit from System.Web.UI.Page. You can see them http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178472.aspx
Also, how would I access things like POST data, or the request URL?
this.Request.Form, would let you access the PostData from a page. this.Request.Url would let you access the url.
How would I return a HTML response? Or a 404?
You can override the Render method of the page to provide HTML Response. You can throw a HttpException(404, "file not found") to return 404.
After going through your questions, you most likely need ASP.NET MVC rather than ASP.NET webforms or you can use a handler as suggested by Martin
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.