How to prevent duplicate form submission in ASP.NET MVC 3? - asp.net-mvc-3

I have a razor view that renders a html form and it posts to the server.
If the form values are right then it gets saved to database.
After insertion, I redirect to another view where user can make further changes.
Right now the user can hit browser back button and resubmit the form to create another record in db.
How do I prevent duplicate submission in my MVC app?

One solution is to put a hidden "token" field on the form that's generated randomly when the form loads. When you see that token come back on creation store it somewhere temporarily (in session if you're using sessions for example). If you see the same one again, you can assume the same form was submitted twice quickly together.

Create a cookie to represent that particular page when it succeeds. If it is replayed with the cookie (which the browser would now send over with every request) you know not to allow the new attempt.

Redirect the user to another HttpGet action after handling the post request.
So that when the user refreshes the browser the post action will not be called again.
return RedirectToAction("YourActionMethod");

Although client side validation is possible, it is not secure enough.
I am not sure if this method applies to MVC 3, but what i did is implement a ActionFilterAttribute
here is the implementation:
public class PreventFrequentCallsAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute
{
public int DelayRequest = 5;
public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
{
var request = filterContext.HttpContext.Request;
var cache = filterContext.HttpContext.Cache;
var originationInfo = request.ServerVariables["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"] ?? request.UserHostAddress;
originationInfo += request.UserAgent;
var targetInfo = request.RawUrl + request.QueryString;
var hashValue = string.Join("", MD5.Create().ComputeHash(Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(originationInfo + targetInfo)).Select(s => s.ToString("x2")));
if (cache[hashValue] != null)
{
filterContext.Controller.ViewData.ModelState.AddModelError("ExcessiveRequests", "Excessive Request Attempts Detected.");
}
else
{
cache.Add(hashValue, originationInfo, null, DateTime.Now.AddSeconds(DelayRequest), Cache.NoSlidingExpiration, CacheItemPriority.Default, null);
}
base.OnActionExecuting(filterContext);
}
}
later, in the target controller, just add this attribute:
[PreventFrequentCalls(3)]
public PartialViewResult LogOn(LogOnViewModel model)

Related

Redirecting to a page if session object expires or user did not login to the application

This is a mvc application
I have the links below on my master page
Link1 Link2 Link3 signout signIn
I have a userprofile object that is populated
when authentication is done.
When the session object for the user expires
and I click on the links, I get the yellow page(error page).
I will prefer a situation where when you click on the
links and the session object is expired, you get
redirected to the signin page.
Soln A: I could solve this problem by writing a method
which test for null value of the userprofile object then
make a call to this method on the click on every link.
I dont want this approach because in the future if there
are new controllers, i will need to care for them.
Do you have any idea how I can solve this problem?
I would have a Base Controller than all of your other controllers inherit from. Within this I would have a
protected override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
{
if (SessionManager.Instance() == null)
{
filterContext.Result = new RedirectToRouteResult(new RouteValueDictionary
{
{ "Controller", "BaseController" },
{ "Action", "LogOn" }
});
}
base.OnActionExecuting(filterContext);
}
The OnAction Executing will be hit before any method in any of your controllers - this way you can check your session is valid or your user is valid or whatever and handle the redirect to the view you want if that is not the case. If you do a Google search for Filters Actions MVC you will find out much more info.

How to apply single page application functionality on parts of asp.NET MVC3 projects?

So I'm creating a asp.NET MVC3 application and want to apply single page application functionality to parts of the application. I think the easiest way to explain is with an example:
The app consists of an admin area and a public area and is built using ordinary link-structure. I want to convert the admin area to an single page application reusing view and models from the existing application. Is it possible to do this and in that case how?
You have to face two main problems, which makes the difference between SPA and standard application:
Links: In standard application, each link redirects you to a different page.
Forms: When a form is been submitted, a request is been issued with the HTTP method you've specified in the post (usually POST) and it contains in the payload the data the user has entered.
In order to solve that problems, you have to take action both in client-side and server-side.
For explaining propose, lets take the following code:
HomeController.cs:
public class HomeController : Controller {
public ActionResult Index() {
return View();
}
public ActionResult Contact() {
return View(new ContactUsViewModel());
}
[HttpPost]
[ValidateAntiForgeryToken]
public ActionResult Contact(ContactUsViewModel model) {
if (ModelState.IsValid) {
/* Send mail / Save in DB etc. */
return Redirect("Index");
}
return View(model);
}
}
Index.cshtml:
<p>This is a simple page.</p>
<p>#Html.ActionLink("Click here to contact us", "Contact")
Client-Side:
We should fix up linking between pages, as well as forms submittions.
Links: You can wire up an event in JS (jQuery if you'd like) that'll observe for each link click in the areas you'd like to apply on SPA - then, instead of redirecting the user - you'll load the content via AJAX.
For instance, take a look at this sample:
$("a").click(function(e) {
e.preventDefault(); // Disable standard redirecting
var href = $(e.currentTarget).attr("href");
$.get(href, function(responseText) {
$("#main-content-wrapper").html(responseText);
});
});
Forms: Just like in the approch we've used for links, we can wire up an observer to the form submit event in JS and then transfer the data using AJAX.
For instance:
$("form").submit(function(e) {
e.preventDefault(); // Disable standard submittion
var data = $(e.currentTarget).serialize(); // Serializing the form data
var method = $(e.currentTarget).attr("method");
if (typeof (method) == "undefined") { method = "POST"; }
$.ajax({
method: $(e.currentTarget).attr("method"),
parameters: data,
statusCodes: {
404: function() { /* Handle it somehow */ }
403: function() { /* Handle it... */ }
200: function(response) {
/* Since we've done a form submittion, usurally if we're getting standard OK (200) status code - we've transffered a data - such as JSON data - indicating if the request success or we got errors etc. The code you're writing here depends on how your current application works. */
},
});
});
Server-Side:
Since you don't wish to break your current application logic - you have to still be able to use standard ASP.NET MVC methods - such as View(), Redirect() and so on.
In this case, I recommend to create your own custom base Controller class - which will override ASP.NET basic implementation.
For instance, this is a starting point:
public class MyController : System.Web.Mvc.Controller {
public override View(string viewName) {
if (Request.IsAjaxRequest()) {
return PartialView(viewName); // If this is an AJAX request, we must return a PartialView.
}
return base.View(viewName);
}
}
Few things you have to keep in mind:
You have to somehow distinguish between standard requests and AJAX requests - the way I've used with Request.IsAjaxRequest() is a great way to do so.
Many times when you're handling a form, In the form submittion action, after you finish with the form logic, you're using Redirect() to redirect the user to another page. As you may have guessed, you can't take this approch when developing SPA. However, I can think of few solutions for this problem:
You can create a status handler in the JS code so when redirecting is been issued by the server - you can load the content via AJAX / display a message and so on.
You can override Redirect() and add a specific logic to perform in case of redirection when the request was done by AJAX - for instance, you can request from ASP.NET to perform the action that you're going to be transfered into and then return its content etc.
You can decide that although its an SPA app - when a redirect was issued - you allows the server to perform this redirection.
As you can see - there're many approches you can take, and they depends on the way you've developed your site, how you wish it to work and what is the basic rules you're defining (e.g. "No redirection is permitted never - even after submitting a form", "After form submittion - always in case that the operation success - I'm displaying a message or performing other JS action. Because of that, I can override Redirect() and if this is an AJAX request I can return a JSON object." etc.)

Avoiding unauthorized access to a page by changing the URL query parameter in mvc3

I'm new in mvc and I have a question: If I have Index page (page with list of some object this is url http://localhost:6384/admin/) and I have actionlink button on which when user clicks he gets details of that object this is url http://localhost:6384/Admin/Apartman/details/1.
ID of obejct is 1, but if user change value 1 to some other value he will get some other object which maybe he shouldn't be able to see it.
What can I do to protect application?
The way i do it is simply checking whether the user has access to that object.
public ActionResult EditProfile(int id)
{
ApartmentViewModel objVM=MyService.GetApartment(id);
if(objVM.CreatedById==id)
{
return View(objVM);
}
else
{
return View("UnAuthorized");
}
}

MVC3 url routing - render view with previous url (like a postback)

I have a Controller which has a Create method to handle HttpPost data from a form. The page containing the form is accessed by the URL
CallOutcome/Call?orderId=114565
When the form is submitted, I do a db insert & create a view model object which is returned to the view to display the form again. This works fine, however the URL has now changed to the name of my action method:
CallOutcome/Create
How can I make it show the original URL? The desired result would be like that it worked like a postback, i.e. reshowing the same page and URL.
This is my (simplified) action method, which returns a CallDetailsViewModel object to a view named 'Call':
[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Create(GGAP_CallOutcome callOutcome)
{
if (ModelState.IsValid)
{
callRepository.SaveCallOutcome(callOutcome);
return View("Call", new CallDetailsViewModel{
CustomerOrder = new CustomerOrder{},
CallOutcome = new CallOutcome{},
Task = new Task{}
});
}
}
not many responses! too close to christmas maybe?
For the record, I used RedirectToRoute:
return RedirectToRoute(new
{
controller = "CallOutcome",
action = "Call",
orderId = Convert.ToInt32(callOutcome.OrderId)
});
Which does exactly what I wanted.

mvc3 OutputCache RemoveOutputCacheItem RenderAction

I did my research but haven't found any answers.
I'm using Html.RenderAction in a masterpage ( to render page header with links specific to user permissions ). Action is decorated with OutputCache, returns partial control and gets cached as expected.
When the event happens ( let's say permissions are changed ) I want to programmatically invalidate cached partial control.
I'm trying to use RemoveOutputCacheItem method. It takes a path as a parameter. I'm trying to set the path to the action used in Html.RenderAction. That doesn't invalidate the action.
How can I programmatically invalidate the action?
Thanks
The cache for child actions is stored in the OutputCacheAttribute.ChildActionCache property. The problem is that the API generating ids for child actions and storing them in this object is not public (WHY Microsoft??). So if you try to loop through the objects in this collection you will discover that it will also contain the cached value for your child action but you won't be able to identify it unless you reverse engineer the algorithm being used to generate keys which looks something like this (as seen with Reflector):
internal string GetChildActionUniqueId(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
{
StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
builder.Append("_MvcChildActionCache_");
builder.Append(filterContext.ActionDescriptor.UniqueId);
builder.Append(DescriptorUtil.CreateUniqueId(new object[] { this.VaryByCustom }));
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(this.VaryByCustom))
{
string varyByCustomString = filterContext.HttpContext.ApplicationInstance.GetVaryByCustomString(HttpContext.Current, this.VaryByCustom);
builder.Append(varyByCustomString);
}
builder.Append(GetUniqueIdFromActionParameters(filterContext, SplitVaryByParam(this.VaryByParam)));
using (SHA256 sha = SHA256.Create())
{
return Convert.ToBase64String(sha.ComputeHash(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(builder.ToString())));
}
}
So you could perform the following madness:
public ActionResult Invalidate()
{
OutputCacheAttribute.ChildActionCache = new MemoryCache("NewDefault");
return View();
}
which obviously will invalidate all cached child actions which might not be what you are looking for but I am afraid is the only way other than of course reverse engineering the key generation :-).
#Microsoft, please, I am begging you for ASP.NET MVC 4.0:
introduce the possibility to do donut caching in addition to donut hole caching
introduce the possibility to easily expire the result of a cached controller action (something more MVCish than Response.RemoveOutputCacheItem)
introduce the possibility to easily expire the result of a cached child action
if you do 1. then obviously introduce the possibility to expire the cached donut portion.
You might want to approach this a different way. You could create a custom AuthorizeAttribute -- it would simply allow everyone -- and add override the OnCacheValidation method to incorporate your logic. If the base OnCacheValidation returns HttpValidationStatus.Valid, then make your check to see if the state has changed and if so, return HttpValidationStatus.Invalid instead.
public class PermissionsChangeValidationAttribute : AuthorizeAttribute
{
public override OnAuthorization( AuthorizationContext filterContext )
{
base.OnAuthorization( filterContext );
}
public override HttpValidationStatus OnCacheAuthorization( HttpContextBase httpContext )
{
var status = base.OnCacheAuthorization( httpContext );
if (status == HttpValidationStatus.Valid)
{
... check if the permissions have changed somehow
if (changed)
{
status = HttpValidationStatus.Invalid;
}
}
return status;
}
}
Note that there are ways to pass additional data in the cache validation process if you need to track the previous state, but you'd have to replicate some code in the base class and add your own custom cache validation handler. You can mine some ideas on how to do this from my blog post on creating a custom authorize attribute: http://farm-fresh-code.blogspot.com/2011/03/revisiting-custom-authorization-in.html

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