MVC 3 Appending Anchor to outgoing URL - asp.net-mvc-3

I am implementing a non-Javascript page for a client. The page contains a number of third party grids. When JS is turned off and a sort is performed the page i,s posted back to the server , which is fine. However, I want the page to navigate to the grid that was sorted.
I can do this by using anchors, and I have tested it. However, as I am new to MVC I don't know how to append the anchor to the outgoing URL.
For example I may get a URL like Team/User/42?SortGrid1-field-asc
After it has been processed by the controller I need the URL to be sent to the client as
Team/User/42?SortGrid1-field-asc#Grid1
Any ideas?
I have tried to append the anchor internally using lines like
return Redirect(Url.Action("User", "Team", new { Id = Id }) + "#Grid1");
But fail to see how to stop it going off in an infinite loop. If I redirect to another action then I go down a whole new path , which, code wise, will go on forever.

Have a look at the answer to a question I posted: How can I add an anchor tag to my URL?
I think you may have to go through the controller and use generateURL to get the anchor into the url

Related

Wicket (1.6) stateless form resets paging

I've already tried to find anything about that problem but I guess I either was not sure how to shortly describe the problem to find a solution or nobody else had that before which I can't think of. Maybe my thinking is wrong, too.
I have a stateless wicket 1.6 form with an ajax supporting panel (WebMarkupContainer with output id). The panel holds a dataview with paging navigator. The dataview itself is filled by a DataProvider.
The panel shows some entries from the database and below that is the navigator. by clicking any page on the navigator, the panel is refreshed (ajax) and shows content from that page. The page itself is not re-rendered by the browser.
When I now leave the page by navigating to another internal page (so basically when leaving the dataview-panel-page in any way) to open a detail page or so and then return to that dataview-page the navigator is resetted (because it's stateless I guess). The navigator can't remember which page to show and begins at the top of the first page again.
The question is: How can I solve this? I would like to i.ex. navigate to page 2 and then temporary leave the page for another internal page. When returning I want to be on page 2, focussed on the record where I clicked the link to "details" before. This also happens when I just open a new page in a new Browser tab.
Thank you!
Here's some code:
final WebMarkupContainer gamesPanel = new AjaxContainer("gamesPanel");
final DataView<Game> dataView =
new GameDataView("gameOverview", targetCurrencyModel, searchTextModel, gameFilterModel,
new GameDataProvider(searchTextModel, gameFilterModel, targetCurrencyModel));
dataView.setItemsPerPage(ITEMS_PER_PAGE);
gamesPanel.add(dataView);
final XNPagingNavigator navigator = new XNPagingNavigator("navigator", dataView);
navigator.setOutputMarkupId(true);
add(navigator);
You guys can try what I mean: The page I'm talking about is http://www.xbox-now.de. Just navigate to page 2, then click on details and return to main page.
I think you might use History API to push a new state when you click on navigation bar. In the new URL for the state you can include a parameter that indicates the index of the current navigator page.
You can customize your AJAX link in order to perform this operations when user click on it.
For more details on History API see Updating address bar with new URL without hash or reloading the page
I solved this in the NoWicket framework by introducing a model aware page cache which reuses page instances when hashcode/equals matches in the page model. You can see the implementation in the GitHub repo, try this implementation of the IPageFactory wrapper as a starting point, but it is more code involved there, just check out the code, debug the example and navigate the code to understand it better in order to apply it to your application. See your use case in action by trying this data table example in the documentation website (which you can also debug locally): http://invesdwin.de/nowicket/ajaxdatatable
Try changing the paging index, navigate to a different page and navigate back to the data table example page. You will still see the paging index that you left there.
Thank you guys for your replies. I've done it now another way. Used the base code from here and modified it in some ways. Added some nice css AttributeModifiers to indicate the actual page:
item.add(new AttributeModifier("class", new PageLinkCssModel(pageable, pageIndex, "active")));
Then I modified some code to add or reset the page parameter, that it's 1) used only once and 2) keeps all the actual page parameters which were there before adding own ones. So I am just appending the page number now. This way I can keep my initially mount path like www.foo.bar/path/path/path. Complete URL would now look like: www.foo.bar/path/path?page=123.
To pass my entered page (i.e. page=5) to the data provider I just had to override the providers iterator. It should start with the page I entered. Due to the ugly generated navigator URLs (which are extremly bad for SEO) I now have nice looking urls which are working independently what wasn't possible before. And that's also the reason why I could not get back to the correct page. The navigator URL was not lookup-able by wicket.
new DataView<GamePrice>("gamePriceOverview", new GameDetailDataProvider(gameId, targetRegion) {
#Override
public Iterator<GamePrice> iterator(final long first, final long count) {
return super.iterator(ITEMS_PER_PAGE * getCurrentPage(), count);
}
getCurrentPage() comes from the base template and gets the actual page number entered (if one is entered):
public long getCurrentPage() {
// -1 weil zero based
return getRequest().getQueryParameters().getParameterValue("page").toString() != null
? (getRequest().getQueryParameters().getParameterValue("page").toLong() - 1)
: 0;
}
So instead of having ugly SEO-unfriendly URLs which are also not compatible to work independant (directly enter the generated url) I now have the same URL I expect with an added page-parameter.
URL now would looks like:
http://localhost:8080/game/4249/de/doom-preorder?page=2
URL before was:
localhost:8080/game/4249/DE/doom-preorder?0-1.ILinkListener-gamePrices-navigator-navigation-2-pageLink
If I now go back from the detail page to the main index with active "Bookmarkable-Navigator", I correctly come back to the page and position where I left it (because of bookmarkable page links).
That's how I achieved this problem with a nice bonus: User- and SEO-friendly URLs.

Single page application with Rails 4 and AngularJS

Ok, this idea might seem quite a bit crazy and it kindo' is (at least for me at my level).
I have a fairly standarad rails app (some content pages, a blog, a news block, some authentication). And I want to make it into a single page app.
What I want to accomplish is:
All the pages are fetched through AJAX like when using turbolinks, except that the AJAX returns only the view part (the yield part in the layout) withought the layout itself, which stays the same (less data in the responces, quicker render and load time).
The pages are mostly just static html with AngularJS markup so not much to process.
All the actual data is loaded separately through JSON and populated in the view.
Also the url and the page title get changed accordingly.
I've been thinking about this concept for quite a while and I just can't seem to come up with a solution. At this point I've got to some ideas on how this actualy might be done along with some problems I can't pass. Any ideas or solutions are greatly appreciated. Or might be I've just gone crazy and 3 small requests to load a page are worse then I big that needs all the rendering done on server side.
So, here's my idea and known problems.
When user first visits the app, the view template with angular markup is rendered regularly and the second request comes from the Angular Resource.
Then on ngClick on any link that adress is sent to ngInclude of the content wrapper.
How do I bind that onClick on any link and how can I exclude certain links from that bind (e.g. links to external authentication services)?
How do I tell the server not to render the layout if the request is comming from Angular? I though about adding a parameter to the request, but there might be a better idea.
When ngInclude gets the requested template, it fires the ngInit functions of the controllers (usually a single one) in that template and gets the data from the server as JSON (along with the proper page title).
Angular populates the template with the received data, sets the browser url to the url of the link and sets the page title to what it just got.
How do I change the page title and the page url? The title can be changed using jQuery, but is there a way through Angular itself?
Again, I keep thinking about some kind of animation to make this change more fancy.
Profit!
So. What do you guys think?
OK, in case enyone ever finds this idea worth thinking about.
The key can be solved as follows.
Server-side decision of whether to render the view or not.
Use a param in the ngInclude and set the layout: false in the controller if that param is present.
Have not found an easier way.
Client-side binding all links except those that have a particular class no-ajax
Here's a directive that does it.
App.directive('allClicks', function($parse) {
return {
restrict: 'A',
transclude: true,
replace: true,
link: function(scope, element, attrs) {
var $a = element.find('a').not($('a.no-ajax')),
fn = $parse(attrs['allLinks']);
$a.on('click', function(event) {
event.preventDefault();
scope.$apply(function() {
var $this = angular.element(event.target);
fn(scope, {
$event: event,
$href: $this.attr('href'),
$link: $this
});
});
});
}
};
})
And then use it on some wrapper div or body tag like <body ng-controller="WrapperCtrl" all-links="ajaxLink($href)"> and then in your content div do <div id="content" ng-include="current_page_template">
In your angular controller set the current_page template to the document.URL and implement that ajaxLink function.
$scope.ajaxLink = function(path) {
$scope.current_page_template = path+"?nolayout=true";
}
And then when you get your JSON with your data from the server don't forget to use history.pushState to set the url line and document.title = to setr the title.

ASP MVC 3 prevent multiple inserts on page refresh

Let's say I have a simple ASP MVC3 list controller, with an add method, with an id parameter.
List:
http://localhost/MVCAPP/ListFoo/
Add method
http://localhost/MVCAPP/ListFoo/Add?id=1
In my Add method, I update my Viewmodel with the added element, then makes a call to:
return View("ListFoo", viewModel);
The updated list is displayed, and everything's almost fine.
The problem is that with such a return, the URL in the address bar is still
http://localhost/MVCAPP/ListFoo/Add?id=1
And if the user hits F5, another item will be added, which I'd like to prevent.
I know I can filter out such a behavior in the controller, but I'd rather prefer to redirect the browser address bar to:
http://localhost/MVCAPP/ListFoo/
Do you know any way to do this?
By the way, I'm not sure trying to control the address bar content is the right way to look at this issue...
Use the Action.RedirectToAction method to redirect the client after the work is done in the controller.
Besides that, you could use POST as FormMethod to send data to the server.
That is why you need to use PRG: Post-Redirect-Get when you are doing any such form post.
Have a look here.
So the best option is to redirect the user to a GET method to display the page.

How can I add a URL parameter but hide others in a POST - Spring MVC

I'm trying to add a URL parameter within a Spring MVC application. It's a basic search page that shows results.
In the search page, there is a form that is set to POST. There are many hidden fields and other fields I don't want in the URL. So, I don't want to do a GET.
I do want the search query in the URL. So after clicking the search button, the resulting search results page needs to have a URL like /search?query=hello
To get it to work, I'm creating a RequestMapping method in the Spring MVC Controller and doing a redirect: tacking on the query parameter. However, I'm not sure using a redirect is the best answer, seems there could be performance concerns redirecting as well.
I looked around and noticed folks using javascript and the location object, but setting the location object obviously relaunches the URL you set it to. I also looked at the HTTPServletResponse & HTTPServletRequest objects, but couldn't find much.
Any thoughts on how I can force the search parameter to be added to the URL?
Your form will have an 'action' specified telling it where to POST to. I'd have thought you could attach an onclick event to your submit button (or an onsubmit event to your form) that updates the action url by appending "?query=" to it.
document.<form name>.action += "?query=...";
Then you just have to worry about someone posting your form without JavaScript enabled - in this case you could fall back to your redirect.
I don't know how the server technology so I can't say if it will be happy giving you both GET and POST parameters, if not you'll have to manually strip the GETs out of the URL.
But anyway, this seems like a rather odd situation to be in - is it really that big a deal to show the parameters in the URL? Anything that gets posted by an HTML form can still be inspected with the right tools, it's just ever so slightly more difficult.
I wanted to provide a more complete answer to my question with code. The previous user helped me down this path, so I'll keep it as the accepted answer. However, there is one item to note:
If you add on to the action, and you have an input text box with the same name, the page posts a duplicate value like: query=hello,hello.
So, I needed to remove the name on the input box, and use the following javascript. Note, I am using the prototype.js framework:
Event.observe(window, 'load', function(event) {
Event.observe('searchForm', 'submit', function(event) {
$('searchForm').action += "?query="+$('searchBox').value;
});

Is there a way to AJAX load a page and change URL in URL bar without hashing?

This is probably going to get a resounding no, but I am wondering if it possible to have the URl change dynamically with using hashing, and without invoking a http request from the browser?
My client is keen on using AJAX for main navigation. This is fine, when the end user goes to the front page first, but when they want to use the deep linking, despite it working, it forces an extra load time as the page loads the front page, then invokes the AJAX from the hash.
UPDATE: Could it be possible, given that what I want to avoid is the page reload (the reason is that it looks bad) to stem the reload by catching the hash with PHP before the headers are sent, and redirecting before the page load. This way only one page loads, and the redirect is all but invisible to the user. Not sure how to do this, but seems like it is possible?
Yes, this is possible. I often do this to store state in the hash part of the URL. The result is that the page doesn't reload, but if the user does reload, they're taken to the right page.
Using this method, the URL will look like: "/index#page=home" or "/index#page=about"
You'll need to write a JavaScript function that handles navigation, and you'll need a containing div that gets rewritten with the contents fetched from AJAX.
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<div id="content"></div>
<script type="text/javascript">
function link(page) {
location.hash = "page="+page;
loadPage(page);
}
// NOTE: This is using MooTools. Use the AJAX method in whatever
// JavaScript framework you're using.
function loadPage(page) {
new Request.HTML({
url: "/ajax/"+page+".html",
onSuccess: function(tree, elements, html) {
document.id('content').setProperty('html', html);
}
}).get();
}
</script>
Now, you'll also need to have something that checks the hash on page load to load the right content initially. Again, this is using MooTools, but use whatever onLoad method your JavaScript framework provides.
<script type="text/javascript">
document.addEvent('domready', function() {
parts = location.hash.split('=');
loadPage(parts[1]);
}
</script>
Ok, the problem is that opening an AJAX link of the form http://example.com/#xyz results in a full page being downloaded to the browser, and then the AJAX-altered content is changed once the page has loaded and checked the hash part of its URL. The user has a diconcerting experience.
You can hugely improve this by making a page that just contains the static elements - menus, etc. - and a loading GIF in the content area. This page checks its URL upon loading and dynamically fetches the content specified by the hash part. The page can have any URL you want; we'll use http://example.com/a. Links to this page (http://example.com/a#xyz) now provide a good user experience for users with scripting enabled.
However, new users won't come to the site by fetching http://example.com/a; they'll fetch http://example.com. This is fine - serve the full page, including the home page content and links that don't require scripting to work (e.g., http://example.com/xyz). A script run on loading this page should alter the href of AJAXable links to their AJAX form (http://example.com/a#xyz); thus the first link a user clicks on will result in a full page load but subsequent ones won't.
The only remaining problem is is a no-script user gets sent an AJAX link. You can add a noscript block to the AJAX page that contains a message explaining the problem and provides a link back to the homepage; you could include instructions on how to enable scripting or even how to modify the link by removing a# and pressing enter.
It's not a great answer, but you can offer a different link in the page itself; e.g., if the address bar shows /#xyz you include a link to /xyz somewhere in the page. You could also add a link or button that uses script to bookmark the page, which would again use the non-AJAX form of the link.

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