Page Name Showing Up in URL

[Charles Hoens]

I've been searching the forum, but perhaps I don't have the right parameters. Someone must have solved this problem at some point or another.

My a5w page names are showing up in the url area of the browser. I really don't want this to happen, as the user might be able to use this to work around my security. I DO set all my pages to "requires login", but it still looks bad and in my clients' opinion, unprofessional.

How can I fix this?

Thanks!

[DaveM]

Re: Page Name Showing Up in URL

Charles, I think you are referring to page title. That shows in the top of some browsers. It is not required to even have one, but you could name the page as Home or "" if you want nothing.

I am not as familiar with a5w pages, but believe there is html associated at the top of the page and this should be editable or even removable. Normally, no name is specified or you want none specify as "" should be best.

[Steve Wood]

Re: Page Name Showing Up in URL

Dave is referring to the Title Meta tag which looks like this <title>My Page Name</title> and goes in the Head area of the A5W page. That displays the text in the TAB, but has no effect on what is in the URL. I think what you mean is that you want to hide the page name in the URL. Like if you are hitting mydomain.com/about.a5w you want your URL to just show mydomain.com, and similar for any page you hit in your website.

This is accomplished on web servers like Apache using a method called mod_rewrite, and it requires code on that server to "rewrite" the URL to something else AFTER going to the page. So the server hits mydomain.com/about.a5w but the URL is rewritten to show mydomain.com or perhaps mydomain.com/about if you want.

Alpha does not have this feature but there are two ways I can think of that will do this:

The first is using an Ajax component to hold your application. The most common and useful is the TabbedUI. No matter what you pack in to the TabbedUI, it will always show the same URL in the address. But I bet that is not going to help because you are obviously hitting different A5W pages and want a consistent URL even so.

So a way to keep the address bar somewhat consistent is to use a redirect such as below. The default page index.a5w would contain ONLY the following (assuming you only had three pages, about, contact and index):

<%a5
dim pg as c
select
case pg="about"
a5w_include("about.a5w")
case pg="contact"
a5w_include("contact.a5w")
case else
a5w_include("index1.a5w")
'nothing
end select
%>

In this case, the following URL would show your About page BUT not show "About.A5W" in the address bar. Obviously to be more secure, you would replace 'about' with something more obscure.

http://www.mydomain.com/index.a5w?pg=about

What would be a lot easier is to convince your customer that showing the URL has NO reducing effect on security. How could it?

[CharlesParker]

Re: Page Name Showing Up in URL

I would be willing to bet it's more about a user logging in and going to a "userpermissionscheck" page - then stopping right there and entering a direct URL. If the user just enters a url (even one with a tabbedui) hes in because he's logged in through alpha5s security and typical usergroups settings.
the usercheck page might set a variable or permissions to restrict this action, but not if the user stops there...it would be alot harder if the user did not know the address of the page in the first place

Am i right Charles?

[Charles Hoens]

Re: Page Name Showing Up in URL

Yes, that's it exactly.

[Steve Wood]

Re: Page Name Showing Up in URL

I would never have guessed that. Your permissions check page needs a redirect after code to ensure they cannot "stop there". Or control access by ensuring the ONLY way to access that page is if you came from some other page (however it is supposed to work in your app.) You would use request.referer to know what page they came from.

[CharlesParker]

Re: Page Name Showing Up in URL

I can't figure that out either...lol I think we both have a major flaw or misunderstanding of our intermediate usercheckpage.
Once a user logs in they go to a checkpage - then theres buttons on there that direct them according to their permissions per say - however technically at that point they are logged in via alpha and could go to any known url without the modifications that the checkpage would impose.

I know several people on here talk about their setups using a checkpage of sorts to modify a users security but like you I don't know how to set it up so theres no user decision to make ( I guess)

In my case when a user logs in they get sent to a page that displays a button that actually changes their usergroup when they click it to "Continue" to the tabbedui. This is where I feel your pain and came to understand whats going on with you!

If they just stop there - the user group would not get changed based on the other fields...

Is it possible to update the usergroup table when the page loads and automatically response.redirect after? So that a user never sees the page? As I said right now I "Submit" the info to the tables via a button that the user clicks

[Peter.Greulich]

Re: Page Name Showing Up in URL

I'm a little confused by all this. As Steve says, after you login you send the user to an intermediate page to set whatever code you need. At the bottom of that code there is a redirect. They never see and they never stop at the intermediate page. Furthermore, if you are using user groups & permissions & component security, they can never access anything except what you have defined - no matter what url they type in.

Getting back to Charles Hoens question, in addition to what Steve said, the tabbed_Ui is basically using an iframe. If you use a page with an iframe and put all the content "inside" the iframe, they will only see one url.

[GGandhi]

Re: Page Name Showing Up in URL

sometime back one of the member had a website dealing with boats, think dealership in Canada, I am sure. I was almost sure it was one of the steves. I did advanced search could not come up with the right post, may be I am not using right words to search. in the example in that post, the page url never changed, stayed exactly the same while navigating. it was not done with tabbed ui, regular a5w pages and was all alpha.
hope someone will remember that post and that method may be useful

[Steve Wood]

Re: Page Name Showing Up in URL

Sounds like my app at trinav.com. its out of date style by modern standards. URL based search strings rather than Ajax. Right, no tabbed ui (Alpha Five 10.5). But how does this relate to the discussion?

[CharlesParker]

Re: Page Name Showing Up in URL

Furthermore, if you are using user groups & permissions & component security, they can never access anything except what you have defined - no matter what url they type in.

While true, the intermediate page may make an adjustment affecting the usergroup.
I use a php membership software (amember) that hits tables in the same database as my app. The intermediate checkpage consists of tables and field values that get set from outside of Alpha, say for instance an ispaid toggle - so when a user logs in - then gets directed to the checkpage the usergroup may change based on the ispaid values obtained from teh database and then affecting the usergroup value for the user.
This is where the conundrum exists - at this point before the changes are committed - the user "could" just go to a known URL.
It would be better to have a solution at the database level actually but I do not know how to do that because the user group is determined by more than one field value. company_id_isactive and userlevel.

So a question.
first everyone says I can put code on my page that holds the tabbedui so that a user can ONLY come from my checkpage.
can someone post an example as well as WHERE to put it?
request.referrer sounds great and Exactly what I would need in my case to tighten it all up.

[GGandhi]

Re: Page Name Showing Up in URL

But how does this relate to the discussion?

the page url never changed, stayed exactly the same while navigating, that method may be useful

this was my sentence in that post #9 ( on top of that I remembered correctly, it was one of the steves) what ever mechanism was used in that to keep the url same may be useful. so no one will be able to see the a5w page names.

if that is not applicable, ok then.

edit: now that I know the name I went back to the site and navigated few times, unfortunately now the a5w pages name shows up. so ignore my two posts.

[Peter.Greulich]

Re: Page Name Showing Up in URL

can someone post an example as well as WHERE to put it?
request.referrer sounds great and Exactly what I would need in my case to tighten it all up.

If you are asking how to redirect to another page, use:

RESPONSE.REDIRECT("somepage.a5w")

The sequence of pages would typically be:

Index.a5w (the login page) which directs to...
YourIntermediatePage.a5w (contains whatever xbasic you might need) which redirects to...
TabbedUi.a5w page (assuming that's where you want the user to land)

The user never pauses on the "YourIntermediatePage.a5w". It just executes some code and then redirects. The last line of code on that page would be: RESPONSE.REDIRECT("TabbedUi.a5w")

[bachir]

Re: Page Name Showing Up in URL

Hi Peter,
it seems that you know very well this issue , I m facing an issue with my IP address which always shown in the URL area, I want to replace it with a domain name.

Now I have: "http://62.210.162.134/TabbedUI_FlyingStartTabbedUI.a5w"

I need to replace it with : "http://domain.com/TabbedUI_FlyingStartTabbedUI.a5w"

can you have any idea how to arrange that?
thanks

[Steve Wood]

Re: Page Name Showing Up in URL

You need to purchase the domain name from a registrar like register.com or godaddy.com (just an example, there are millions of these types of companies.) After purchase, you need, at a minimum, to set the DNS "A" record to your IP address. There will be instructions sent to you and on the registrar's website once you complete your purchase.