Alternatives to Iframe - asp.net

I have been developing a service that allows users to insert information from my database onto their sites by using iframes. The only problem was that the iframe needs to be resizeable and this is one of the biggest problems with iframes as most people already know, aswell as the fact I can access objects on the parent page from within the iframe and vice versa.
I have thought of making an asp.net web servie to server up the HTML and access it by using a get request. However this also has a problem since these request can only be made from the same domain?
What I need to know is the best way to retrieve a small piece of HTML containing customer reviews from server and display it on their page using some sort of AJAX.
Thanks

if your users can add a < script > line to their site pointing to code on your site, you can fairly easily offer a mechanism to build a floating (and resizable) DIV on their page that you jquery.load() with content from your site ...
example:
"To use my service on your site, add the following line to your < head >"
<script type='text/javascript' src='http://mysite.com/scripts/dataget.js />
then add a link or button anywhere and give it a class 'get-date-from-mysite'
< input type='button' value='Click to see the data' class='get-data-from-mysite' />
--
Then in that script you do (something like):
$(function() {
$('.get-data-from-mysite').click(function() {
$('body').append("<div id='mydiv' 'style=position:absolute; z-index:999; left: ...
$('#mydiv').load(' .... // url that sends html for content
});
...etc
resize-able div stuff needs to be added too

I think the jQuery library might be what you need - specifically, look into jQuery Ajax.

Following on what Scott Evernden is explaining, you can add a <script> tag such as:
<script id="my_script_tag" type='text/javascript' src='http://mysite.com/scripts/dataget.js' />
Inside dataget.js you can simply reference the script tag itself by using its "id" (document.getElementById("my_script_tag");) and replace it (insertBefore()) with relevant data.
To get the data from your server you can use JSONP (lots of stuff on SO as well), which is an ajax technique for cross-domain communication.

Related

Jquery Select Box not working on dynamically generated elements

I am with a problem. I am using jQuery.SelectBox for the select box and dropdowns.
It is working fine when the elements are loaded with the page load. But its not working when they are loaded by the ajax i.e on dynamicaly generated elements it is not working.
You can check the file here :- http://rvtechnologies.info/brad/jquery.selectBox.js
This line:
jQuery('<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php echo DIVATEMPLATEPATH . "/css/jquery.selectBox.css"; ?>">').appendTo("head");
Is completely invalid. You cannot combine PHP and Javascript! PHP is executed on the server, not in the browser. Please learn about the fundamentals of web development. PHP gets run on the server, it generates code that gets sent to the client, which then in turn runs the code locally on the computer (HTML and JavaScript).
CSS codes are style declaration and stylesheets, once the element gets added to the DOM they will be loaded or applied.
Check the name of id, classes and attributes of the generated elements using tools like firebug and see the generated markup.
I have sorted it out.
I need to call the selecbox again on Ajax success.
I have done like this :-
success: function(html) {
jQuery('#loader').empty();
jQuery("#right_search").append(html);
jQuery("SELECT").selectBox(); //Just Added this
initdatepicker();
stat = 0;
}

onbeforeunload dilemma: iframe breaking vs. annoying message on refresh/back buttons click

I'm implementing a search service called SearchInsideOut.
This search service simply replaces web page results by full web pages (Yes, I used iframe).
The problem I have to deal with is iframe-breaking pages.
The promising solution I found is using onbeforeunload to let users decide whether to stay or leave my site.
But this also creates another annoying behavior.
When users click other links in my site, onbeforeunload will also be triggered.
Fortunately, I could solve this case by placing window.onbeforeunload=null in the onclick event of those links of my site.
Unfortunately, I have no idea how to detect external events like clicking "refresh/back" buttons.
What should I do to solve this difficulty?
All suggestions and comments are highly appreciated.
Take as example this site. Try to refresh the page after u typed some text answering to a post. You will see that the page it will ask you to continue ur work or exit. Make another test without answering to a post, just refresh, you will see that the confirm will not showed, because the site is making a test if the "answer" is empty or not.
Example:
<html>
<head>
<script>
function closeIt()
{
var mytext = document.getElementById("mytext").value;
if(mytext != "")
return "Any string value here forces a dialog box to \n" +
"appear before closing the window.";
}
window.onbeforeunload = closeIt;
</script>
</head>
<body>
<textarea id="mytext"></textarea>
</body>
</html>
So it's up to u to decide when the box will show or not. Visit also Microsoft Msdn to understand when and how onbeforeunload works

creating help for asp.net website

My requirement is to have database based help system for asp.net website, as shown in the image below. i have searched web but could not find even remotely related solution.
DNN Help System http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/6720/dnnhelpimage20091125.jpg
You could assign each help item a unique ID (perhaps GUID to make it easier to generate by the developer enabling help for that item).
Clicking on the link opens a dialog, tooltip, new window, whatever. Just have the UI load the help text by ID from the database.
To make this easier to implement in the UI, there are a few ways. Perhaps you can create a jQuery client-side behavior.
your HTML would look something like:
<span class="help" id="#{unique-id-here}">Admin</admin>
and you could have jQuery on DOM load:
$(function() {
var help = $(".help");
help.prepend("<img src=\"path/to/images/help.png\" />");
help.click(function() {
//do something with this.id; open a popup, a title bar, whatever.
}
});
We did it on our site by doing the following:
We have a HelpTopics database with a HelpTopicId and HelpTopicText
We create an aspx page that displays the HelpTopicText based on the HelptopicId passed in the querystring.
We set up a css class for the A tag that displays the link to the help with the question mark image.
We created a UserControl named TitleandHelp that contained a link to the page mentioned in step 2 and the style for the link set to step 3 above: The usercontrol has a public rpoperty for the title and one for the topicID (We called it HelpContext).
We add the usercontrol to the aspx page where appropriate
<uc2:titleandhelp ID="titleandhelp1" runat="server" HelpContext="4" PageTitle="Forgot Password" />
it may sound like a lot of work, but really it only takes a half hour or so to do all of the setup. The rest of the work lies in populating the table and dragging the usercontrol onto the pages where appropriate.

Multiple reCAPTCHAs in one ASP.Net page

It is possible to add multiple reCAPTCHAS in one form? I tried doing so, even giving the multiple reCAPTCHAS different IDs, but when I load the page in the browser, only one of them is shown.
Is this by design? I need the two reCAPTCHAS because one is for Login, and the other one is for the Register form, which will be shown on the same page.
Thanks!
WT
Only one Cpatcha is supported in a page at any time. What you can do is use AJAX and lod captcha after the form is loaded.
This might of some help.
After a quick google search, it appears that it's not currently possible. One suggestion I saw was to pop up a modal recaptcha just as the user submits the form. ondemandcaptcha for Ruby.
I was initially lead by this thread to believe there is no simple answer, but after digging through the Recaptcha ajax library I can tell you this isn't true! TLDR, working jsfiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/Vanit/Qu6kn/
It's possible to overwrite the Recaptcha callbacks to do whatever you want with the challenge. You don't even need a proxy div because with the overwrites the DOM code won't execute. Call Recaptcha.reload() whenever you want to trigger the callbacks again.
function doSomething(challenge){
$(':input[name=recaptcha_challenge_field]').val(challenge);
$('img.recaptcha').attr('src', '//www.google.com/recaptcha/api/image?c='+challenge);
}
//Called on Recaptcha.reload()
Recaptcha.finish_reload = function(challenge,b,c){
doSomething(challenge);
}
//Called on page load
Recaptcha.challenge_callback = function(){
doSomething(RecaptchaState.challenge)
}
Recaptcha.create("YOUR_PUBLIC_KEY");
It is now possible to do this easily with explicit recaptcha creation. See my answer here:
How do I show multiple recaptchas on a single page?
It's not too difficult to load each Recaptcha only when needed using the Recaptcha AJAX API, see my post here:
How do I show multiple recaptchas on a single page?
the captcha has an img element #recaptcha_challenge_image element , so after you set the recaptcha in one div say "regCaptch",get that img src attr
,set your other captcha div html to the old one html and then set the #recaptcha_challenge_image src to the src you get , here is a working example
var reCaptcha_src = $('#recaptcha_challenge_image').attr('src');
$('#texo').html($('#regCaptch').html());
$('#recaptcha_challenge_image').attr('src',reCaptcha_src);

How do I get the current location of an iframe?

I have built a basic data entry application allowing users to browse external content in iframe and enter data quickly from the same page. One of the data variables is the URL.
Ideally I would like to be able to load the iframes current url into a textbox with javascript. I realize now that this is not going to happen due to security issues.
Has anyone done anything on the server side? or know of any .Net browser in browser controls. The ultimate goal is to just give the user an easy method of extracting the url of the page they are viewing in the iframe It doesn't necessarily HAVE to be an iframe, a browser in the browser would be ideal.
Thanks,
Adam
I did some tests in Firefox 3 comparing the value of .src and .documentWindow.location.href in an iframe. (Note: The documentWindow is called contentDocument in Chrome, so instead of .documentWindow.location.href in Chrome it will be .contentDocument.location.href.)
src is always the last URL that was loaded in the iframe without user interaction. I.e., it contains the first value for the URL, or the last value you set up with Javascript from the containing window doing:
document.getElementById("myiframe").src = 'http://www.google.com/';
If the user navigates inside the iframe, you can't anymore access the value of the URL using src. In the previous example, if the user goes away from www.google.com and you do:
alert(document.getElementById("myiframe").src);
You will still get "http://www.google.com".
documentWindow.location.href is only available if the iframe contains a page in the same domain as the containing window, but if it's available it always contains the right value for the URL, even if the user navigates in the iframe.
If you try to access documentWindow.location.href (or anything under documentWindow) and the iframe is in a page that doesn't belong to the domain of the containing window, it will raise an exception:
document.getElementById("myiframe").src = 'http://www.google.com/';
alert(document.getElementById("myiframe").documentWindow.location.href);
Error: Permission denied to get property Location.href
I have not tested any other browser.
Hope it helps!
document.getElementById('iframeID').contentWindow.location.href
You can't access cross-domain iframe location at all.
I use this.
var iframe = parent.document.getElementById("theiframe");
var innerDoc = iframe.contentDocument || iframe.contentWindow.document;
var currentFrame = innerDoc.location.href;
HTA works like a normal windows application.
You write HTML code, and save it as an .hta file.
However, there are, at least, one drawback: The browser can't open an .hta file; it's handled as a normal .exe program. So, if you place a link to an .hta onto your web page, it will open a download dialog, asking of you want to open or save the HTA file. If its not a problem for you, you can click "Open" and it will open a new window (that have no toolbars, so no Back button, neither address bar, neither menubar).
I needed to do something very similar to what you want, but instead of iframes, I used a real frameset.
The main page need to be a .hta file; the other should be a normal .htm page (or .php or whatever).
Here's an example of a HTA page with 2 frames, where the top one have a button and a text field, that contains the second frame URL; the button updates the field:
frameset.hta
<html>
<head>
<title>HTA Example</title>
<HTA:APPLICATION id="frames" border="thin" caption="yes" icon="http://www.google.com/favicon.ico" showintaskbar="yes" singleinstance="no" sysmenu="yes" navigable="yes" contextmenu="no" innerborder="no" scroll="auto" scrollflat="yes" selection="yes" windowstate="normal"></HTA:APPLICATION>
</head>
<frameset rows="60px, *">
<frame src="topo.htm" name="topo" id="topo" application="yes" />
<frame src="http://www.google.com" name="conteudo" id="conteudo" application="yes" />
</frameset>
</html>
There's an HTA:APPLICATION tag that sets some properties to the file; it's good to have, but it isn't a must.
You NEED to place an application="yes" at the frames' tags. It says they belongs to the program too and should have access to all data (if you don't, the frames will still show the error you had before).
topo.htm
<html>
<head>
<title>Topo</title>
<script type="text/javascript">
function copia_url() {
campo.value = parent.conteudo.location;
}
</script>
</head>
<body style="background: lightBlue;" onload="copia_url()">
<input type="button" value="Copiar URL" onclick="copia_url()" />
<input type="text" size="120" id="campo" />
</body>
</html>
You should notice that I didn't used any getElement function to fetch the field; on HTA file, all elements that have an ID becomes instantly an object
I hope this help you, and others that get to this question. It solved my problem, that looks like to be the same as you have.
You can found more information here: http://www.irt.org/articles/js191/index.htm
Enjoy =]
I like your server side idea, even if my proposed implementation of it sounds a little bit ghetto.
You could set the .innerHTML of the iframe to the HTML contents you grab server side. Depending on how you grab this, you will have to pay attention to relative versus absolute paths.
Plus, depending on how the page you are grabbing interacts with other pages, this could totally not work (cookies being set for the page you are grabbing won't work across domains, maybe state is being tracked in Javascript... Lots of reasons this might not work.)
I don't believe that tracking the current state of the page you are trying to mirror is theoretically possible, but I'm not sure. The site could track all sorts of things server side, you won't have access to this state. Imagine the case where on a page load a variable is set to a random value server-side, how would you capture this state?
Do these ideas help with anything?
-Brian J. Stinar-
Does this help?
http://www.quirksmode.org/js/iframe.html
I only tested this in firefox, but if you have something like this:
<iframe name='myframe' id='myframe' src='http://www.google.com'></iframe>
You can get its address by using:
document.getElementById('myframe').src
Not sure if I understood your question correctly but anyways :)
You can use Ra-Ajax and have an iframe wrapped inside e.g. a Window control. Though in general terms I don't encourage people to use iframes (for anything)
Another alternative is to load the HTML on the server and send it directly into the Window as the content of a Label or something. Check out how this Ajax RSS parser is loading the RSS items in the source which can be downloaded here (Open Source - LGPL)
(Disclaimer; I work with Ra-Ajax...)
Ok, so in this application, there is an iframe in which the user is supplied with links or some capacity that allows that iframe to browse to some external site. You are then looking to capture the URL to which the user has browsed.
Something to keep in mind. Since the URL is to an external source, you will be limited in how much you can interact with this iframe via javascript (or an client side access for that matter), this is known as browser cross-domain security, as apparently you have discovered. There are clever work arounds, as presented here Cross-domain, cross-frame Javascript, although I do not think this work around applies in this case.
About all you can access is the location, as you need.
I would suggest making the code presented more resilitant and less error prone. Try browsing the web sometime with IE or FF configured to show javascript errors. You will be surprised just how many javascript errors are thrown, largely because there is a lot of error prone javascript out there, which just continues to proliferate.
This solution assumes that the iframe in question is the same "window" context where you are running the javascript. (Meaning, it is not embedded within another frame or iframe, in which case, the javascript code gets more involved, and you likely need to recursively search through the window hierarchy.)
<iframe name='frmExternal' id='frmExternal' src='http://www.stackoverflow.com'></frame>
<input type='text' id='txtUrl' />
<input type='button' id='btnGetUrl' value='Get URL' onclick='GetIFrameUrl();' />
<script language='javascript' type='text/javascript'>
function GetIFrameUrl()
{
if (!document.getElementById)
{
return;
}
var frm = document.getElementById("frmExternal");
var txt = document.getElementById("txtUrl");
if (frm == null || txt == null)
{
// not great user feedback but slightly better than obnoxious script errors
alert("There was a problem with this page, please refresh.");
return;
}
txt.value = frm.src;
}
</script>
Hope this helps.
You can access the src property of the iframe but that will only give you the initially loaded URL. If the user is navigating around in the iframe via you'll need to use an HTA to solve the security problem.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms536474(VS.85).aspx
Check out the link, using an HTA and setting the "application" property of an iframe will allow you to access the document.href property and parse out all of the information you want, including DOM elements and their values if you so choose.

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