C# .NET: Problems with query strings with character references - c#

I'm having problems creating a query string and sending it to another webpage.
The text I'm trying to send is long and has special characters. Here is an example:
Represent a fraction 1/𝘣 on a number line diagram by defining the interval from 0 to 1 as the whole and partitioning it into 𝘣 equal parts. Recognize that each part has size 1/𝘣 and that the endpoint of the part based at 0 locates the number 1/𝘣 on the number line.
I can send this just fine if I hand code it:
<a href="Default.cshtml?standardText=Represent a fraction 1/𝘣 on a number line diagram by defining the interval from 0 to 1 as the whole and partitioning it into 𝘣 equal parts. Recognize that each part has size 1/𝘣 and that the endpoint of the part based at 0 locates the number 1/𝘣 on the number line.">
Link Text
</a>
This goes through without any problems, and I can read the entire Query String on the other side.
But if I am creating the link programmatically, my query string gets cut off right before the first character reference. I am using the following setup in a helper function:
string url = "Default.cshtml";
url += "?standardText=" + standard.text;
Link Text
When I use this, I only get "Understand a Fraction as 1/" and then it stops.
When I look at the page source, the only difference in the links is that one has actual ampersands and the second is having those turned into &
<a href="Default.cshtml?standardText=Understand a fraction 1/&#120355; as the quantity formed by 1 part when a whole is partitioned into &#120355; equal parts; understand a fraction &#120354;/&#119887; as the quantity formed by &#120354; parts of size 1/&#120355;."
So the problem is not really the spaces, but the fact that the & is being interpreted as starting a new query string parameter.
I have tried various things [using HttpUtility.UrlEncode, HttpUtility.UrlEncodeUnicode, Html.Raw, trying to replace spaces with "+"], but the problem isn't with the spaces, its with how the character references are being handled. When I tried HttpUtility.urlEncode I got a double-encoding security error.
On the advice of OmG I tried replacing all the &s, #s, and /s using:
url = url.Replace("&","%26");
url = url.Replace("#","%23");
url = url.Replace("/","%2F");
This led to the following link:
All Items
And now when I click on the link I get a different security warning/error:
A potentially dangerous Request.QueryString value was detected from the client (standardText="...raction 1/𝘣 as the qua...").
I don't see why it is so hard to send character references through a QueryString. Is there a way to prevent Razor from converting all my &s to the &amp ; ? The address works fine when it is just plain "&"s.
Update: using URLDecode() on the string does not affect its character entity references, so when I try to decode the string then re-encode it, I still get the double-escape security warning.
Update: on the suggestion of #MikeMcCaughan, I tried using JS, but I am not very knowledgeable about mixing JS and Razor. I tried creating a link by dropping a script into the body like so:
<script type="text/javascript">
var a = document.createElement('a');
var linkText = document.createTextNode("my title text");
a.appendChild(linkText);
a.title = "my title text";
a.href = encodeURIComponent(#url);
document.body.appendChild(a);
</script>
But no link showed up, so I'm obviously doing it wrong.
For reference, when I try to use #Html.Raw(url),
Link Text
The &s are still turned into &amp ;s. the link renders as:
Link text

One simple solution is replacing the special characters by their encoding which can be accessed from here.
As you can find, replace in the string & with %26 using .replace for string. Also, replace / with %2F, # with %23, ; with %3B, and space with %20.
Also, You can do these in C# by the following function:
Server.URLEncode("<The Url>")
and in Javascript by the following function:
encodeURI("<The Url>")
Also, as you know the double-encoding is this. To prevent the double-encoding, you should have not encoded some part of the string before passing the string into the Server.URLEncode function.

Related

Remove characters after specific character for dynamic titles

Hey I would like to cut off a title from an RSS feed after a specific character, in this case, the character ";". I looked up plenty of questions and they all seem to do this with a predefined string. I need my code to pull the title of an RSS feed (which is dynamic, but always in a similar format with the ";" I want to delete the contents before). Here's my Code
ASP.NET - P.S I'm using a fancybox iframe to pull the link up. Its irrelevant to my issue.
<%# FormatTitle( XPath("title") ) %>
C# - I made this code after searching similar questions on StackOverflow
public static string FormatTitle(object TitleIn)
{
string input = "Bid - Contract.: 13-C-00038; Howard F. Curren AWTP New Primary Sludge Pump Station Rehabilitation &#8211; Sheltered Market";
int index = input.IndexOf(";") + 1;
if (index > 0)
input= input.Substring(index);
return input;
}
Now, the problem is now that all of my feeds have the same title, "Howard F. Curren AWTP New Primary Sludge Pump Station Rehabilitation – Sheltered Market". I need the "input" string to accept the "title" field on the xml that's being pulled. Sorry if this has already been answered. I looked up a bunch on StackOverflow and I can't find any that deal with dynamic titles.
Your code ignores the input param TitleIn and uses the local variable input that is set to the string literal. Hence, your method will always return the same value.

How to escape url encoding?

I am creating a link that creates URL parameters that contains links with URL parameters.
The issue is that I have a link like this
http://mydomain/_layouts/test/MyLinksEdit.aspx?auto=true&source=
http://vtss-sp2010hh:8088/AdminReports/helloworld.aspx?pdfid=193
&url=http://vtss-sp2010hh:8088/AdminReports/helloworld.aspx?pdfid=193%26pdfname=5.6%20Upgrade
&title=5.6 Upgrade
This link goes to a bookmark adding page where it reads these parameters.
auto is wheather to read the following parameters or not
source is where to go after you finish adding or cancelling
url is the bookmark link
title is the name of the bookmark
The values of url and title get entered into 2 fields. Then the user has to click save or cancel.
The problem is when the bookmark page enters the values into the field, it will decode them.
Then if you try to save, it will won't let you save because the pdfname value in the url value has a space in it. It needs the link to not have any spaces. So basically, I want it so that after it enters it in the field, it will still be a %20 instead of a space.
There isn't a problem with source, auto, or title, just the url...
Is there a way to solve this? Like maybe a special escape character I can use for the %20?
Note: I cannot modify the bookmark page.
I am using c#/asp.net to create the link and go to it.
Thanks
Since .NET Framework 4.5 you can use WebUtility.UrlEncode.
It resides in System.dll, so it does not require any additional references.
It properly escapes characters for URLs, unlike Uri.EscapeUriString
It does not have any limits on the length of the string, unlike Uri.EscapeDataString, so it can be used for POST requests
System.Net.WebUtility.UrlEncode(urlText)
Another option is
System.Uri.EscapeDataString()
Uri.EscapeDataString() and Uri.UnescapeDataString() are safe comparing to UrlEncode/UrlDecode methods and does not convert plus characters into spaces when decoding.
Some details from another user: http://geekswithblogs.net/mikehuguet/archive/2009/08/16/134123.aspx
Just use HttpUtilty's UrlEncode method right before you hand off the url;
string encoded = HttpUtility.UrlEncode(url);

How can i add double quotes to a string?

I want to add double quotes for a sting . I know by using /" we can add double quotes . My string is
string scrip = "$(function () {$(\"[src='" + names[i, 0] + "']\"" + ").pinit();});";
When i do this on the browser i am getting &quot instead of " quotes . How can i overcome with the problem ?
If your browser has displayed a "&quot" instead of a " character, than there are only a few causes possible. The character should have been emitted to the browser as either itself, or as a HTML entity of ". Please note the semicolor at the end. If a browser sees such 'code', it presents a quote. This is to allow writing the HTML easier, when its attribtues need to contain special characters, compare:
<div attribute="blahblahblah" />
if you want to put a " into the blahs, it'd terminate the attribute's notation, and the HTML code would break. So, adding a single " character should look like:
<div attribute="blah&quote;blahblah" />
Now, if you miss the semicolon, the browser will display blah&quotblahblah instead of blah"blahblah.
I've just noted that your code is actually glueing up the JavaScript code. In JavaScript, the semicolon is an expression delimiter, so probably there is actually a " in the emitted HTML and it is just improperly presented in the error message... Or maybe you have forgotten to open/close some quotes in the javascript, and the semicolon is actually treated as expression terminator?
Be also sure to check why the JavaScript code undergoes html-entity translation. Usually, blocks are not reparsed. Are you setting that JavaScript code as a HTML element attribute? like OnClick or OnSend? Then stop doing it now. Create a javascript-function with this code and call that function from the click/send instead.. It is not worth to encode long expressions in the JS into an attribute! Just a waste of time and nerves.
If all else fails and if the JavaScript is emitted correctly, then look for any text-correcting or text-highlighting or text-formatting modules you have on your site. Quite probable that one of them is mis-reading the html entities and removed the semicolon, or the opposite - that they add them were they are not needed. The ASP.Net itself in general does its job right, and it translates the entites correctly wherever they are needed, so I'd look at the other libraries first.
You can use something like this:
String str=#"hello,,?!"
This should escape all characters
Or
String TestString = "This is a <Test String>.";
String EncodedString = Server.HtmlEncode(TestString);
Here's the manual: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/w3te6wfz.aspx
What else are you doing with the string?
Seems that somewhere after that the string gets encoded. You can could use HttpUtility.HtmlDecode(str); but first you'll have to figure out where your string gets encoded in the first place.
Keep in mind that if you use <%: %> in aspx or #yourvarin Razor it will get encoded automatically. You'll have to use #Html.Raw(yourvar) to suppress that.

Querystring has extra character foreign characters.. Maybe Encoding issue? now what?

It's somewhat of a Hack, but I'm pointing some JSON API to regular asp.net (C#) page and that call is sending a querystring.
When I look at the querystring in my C# code it looks fine, but if I attempt to open a webpage using the string it breaks. If I count the number of characters Its saying 6 or 7 more than what I see.
I've tried removing non-ascii characters as follows with no luck.
string whaturl = "http://" + Request.QueryString["what"];
whaturl = Regex.Replace(whaturl, #"[^\u0000+-\u007F]", "");
whaturl = whaturl.Trim();
when I look at the string I only see one extra character that looks like a blank.
Maybe you need use HttpUtility.URLEncode.

How can I deal with ampersands in a mail client's mailto links?

I have an ASP.NET/C# application, part of which converts WWW links to mailto links in an HTML email.
For example, if I have a link such as:
www.site.com
It gets rewritten as:
mailto:my#address.com?Subject=www.site.com
This works extremely well, until I run into URLs with ampersands, which then causes the subject to be truncated.
For example the link:
www.site.com?val1=a&val2=b
Shows up as:
mailto:my#address.com?Subject=www.site.com?val1=a&val2=b
Which is exactly what I want, but then when clicked, it creates a message with:
subject=www.site.com?val1=a
Which has dropped the &val2, which makes sense as & is the delimiter in a mailto command.
So, I have tried various other was to work around this with no success.
I have tried implicitly quoting the subject='' part and that did nothing.
I (in C#) replace '&' with & which Live Mail and Thunderbird just turn back into:
www.site.com?val1=a&val2=b
I replaced '&' with '%26' which resulted in:
mailto:my#address.com?Subject=www.site.com?val1=a%26amp;val2=b
In the mail with the subject:
www.site.com?val1=a&val2=b
EDIT:
In response to how URL is being built, this is much trimmed down but is the gist of it. In place of the att.Value.Replace I have tried System.Web.HtmlUtility.URLEncode calls which also results in a failure
HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlNodeCollection nodes =doc.DocumentNode.SelectNodes("//a[#href]");
foreach (HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlNode link in nodes)
{
HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlAttribute att = link.Attributes["href"];
att.Value = att.Value.Replace("&", "%26");
}
Try mailto:my#address.com?Subject=www.site.com?val1=a%26val2=b
& is an HTML escape code, whereas %26 is a URL escape code. Since it's a URL, that's all you need.
EDIT: I figured that's how you were building your URL. Don't build URLs that way! You need to get the %26 in there before you let anything else parse or escape it. If you really must do it this way (which you really should try to avoid), then you should search for "&" instead of just "&" because the string has already been HTML escaped at this point.
So, ideally, you build your URL properly before it's HTML escaped. If you can't do it properly, at least search for the right string instead of the wrong one. "&" is the wrong one.
You cant put any character as subject. You could try using System.Web.HttpUtility.URLEncode function on the subject´s value...
Using the URL escape code %26 is the right way.
Sadly this is still not working on the Android OS because of bug 8023
What I ended up doing for my case was eliminating the &.
www.site.com/mytest.php?val1=a=b=c. Where the 2nd and 3rd = would be equivalent to www.site.com?val1=a&val2=b&val3=c
In mytest.php I explode on ? and then explode again on =.
A total hack I know but it does work for me.

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