Review and Add Page

The Review and Add page (ReviewAdd.aspx) enables customers to enter their own reviews of a product. This page appears when a user clicks the Review this Product image link on a product detail page (ProductsDetails.aspx). The link is not actually part of the product detail page. Instead, it is part of the ReviewList user control (_ReviewList.ascx) that is incorporated into the page.

The ReviewAdd.aspx page is brought up in response to users clicking the Review this Product link. The ID of the product to review is passed to this page in the query string. For example, if the user wants to add a review of the Mighty, Mighty Pen, the URL to display this page would be the following:

 ReviewAdd.aspx?productID= 371. 

The page logic is encapsulated in two event handlers, the Page_Load() method and an event handler for the Click event of an ImageButton control. The Page_Load() method obtains the specified ProductID parameter using the Params collection of the page's Request object. The Params collection contains all query-string, form-field, cookie, and server variables sent from a client during an HTTP request. This is the typical API through which page developers access arguments when they're doing page-to-page navigation transfers.

After converting the ProductID into an Integer, the Page_Load() method creates an instance of the ProductDB class and calls its GetProductDetails() method, passing it the product ID. This method internally uses the ProductDetail stored procedure to fetch the ModelName field of the product.

The code in the Page_Load() method is wrapped in a conditional code block that executes only if Page.IsPostBack is false. This check determines whether the page is being accessed for the first time or whether it is being displayed because the user clicked the Submit button (which causes the page to post back to the server). The Page.IsPostBack property provides us with an easy way to ensure the page fetches only product information the first time the page is being displayed.

The ReviewAddBtn_Click() method is fired when a user clicks the Submit Image button on the page. This handler illustrates an important feature of ASP.NET pages and server controls: Although the click actually occurs in the browser, the method runs on the server, after the page has been posted back.

All the logic required to fire the Click method on the server, and there to find and execute the correct method, is built into the page and control framework. No client-side script, ActiveX controls, Java applets, or any other special processing is required to make this happen. It works with all browsers, including Internet Explorer, Netscape, and Opera.

The ReviewAddBtn_Click() method calls the AddReview() method of the ReviewsDB class, which in turn calls the ReviewsAdd stored procedure to save the user's review in the IBuySpy database. All values are HTML encoded before the method is called. This provides protection against a common hacker technique, which is to embed image and anchor links within posted text values that, when later rendered on a page, end up displaying remote images (with pass-through links) on the page.

The page requires that users enter a name and e-mail address. If you look at the source for the ReviewAdd.aspx page, you'll see that there is no input validation code. Instead, we use the built-in ASP.NET validation controls, which enable you to declaratively specify validation constraints on any input control.

ASP.NET comes with built-in validation controls to handle almost any validation requirement: the RequiredField, CompareValidator, Regular ExpressionValidator, RangeValidator, and CustomValidator controls. (Chapter 2 discusses data validation in much more detail.) You can put a validation control anywhere on a page and declaratively link it to a target input control using the validator's ControlToValidate property. You can optionally specify a Text property that displays in place of the validation control if the input data fails the validation test. If necessary, you can use multiple validators to "chain" validation logic for a single control (for example, a field is required and must meet a specified pattern).

The validation controls can perform client-side validation, which provides immediate feedback to the user. The validators also perform their check in server code, so if the browser does not support DHMTL, or if client-side scripting is disabled, the validation check is still performed. No code changes are required to enable either scenario all logic required to handle the checks on both basic and DHTML-compatible browsers is built into the controls themselves.

If you are using validation controls, your server code can determine whether the user's input passed the check by testing the IsValid property of the validation control. Additionally, you can check the page's IsValid property; this property is an aggregate of the IsValid properties of all the validators on the page. If any one validation has detected a failure, the page's IsValid property is set to false.

Only if all controls on the page are valid will we go ahead and add the product review. If one of the input fields is invalid, then the page will simply be redisplayed again, with the validation controls automatically taking care of displaying the appropriate error message to the user.



ASP. NET Solutions - 24 Case Studies. Best Practices for Developers
ASP. NET Solutions - 24 Case Studies. Best Practices for Developers
ISBN: 321159659
EAN: N/A
Year: 2003
Pages: 175

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