Set the HTML form with data from in the page's address

Use JQuery to fill in a Web form when post-back to the page using method="get".

Assume the a Web page has the following address http://localhost:/Example01.htm and contains the following simple HTML form:

The source code of that form may appear as following:

<form action="Example01.htm" method="get">

  <input id="QueryString" type="text" name="QueryString" />

  <select id="Method" name="Method">
    <option value="And">All Words</option>
    <option value="Or">Any Word</option>
  </select>

  <input type="submit" value="Submit" />

</form> 

Upon submit of the form, which references the current page in the forms action parameter, the page's address is updated with the values from the QueryString and Method input fields:

http://localhost:/Example01.htm?QueryString=my+query+terms&Method=And

The following JavaScript parses the address parameters to re-set the form with the data provided by the user:

<script src="jquery-1.9.1.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">


$(document).ready(function () {

    var vQueryString = getURLParam("QueryString");
    $("#QueryString").val(vQueryString);

    var vMethod = getURLParam("Method");
   $("select#Method option").each(function () {
 if ($(this).val() == vMethod) {
     $(this).prop('selected', true);
 }
    });

});

function getURLParam(name){
 return decodeURIComponent((new RegExp('[?|&]' +
    name + '=' + '([^&;]+?)(&|#|;|$)').exec(location.search) || 
    [, ""])[1].replace(/\+/g, '%20')) || null;
}
</script>

REST calls in CSharp

I needed to code set of REST calls in C# with a some specific requirements that prevented use of simpler WebClient API:

• Setting the ContentType for "text/xml"
• Support for GET, DELETE, and POST methods
• The POST method had to submit data (an XML fragment) and also returned data (XML fragment)

Following is what I hacked out and documenting here so I don't have to look it up again.

XmlDocument RestGet(string uri)
{
    XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();

    HttpWebRequest request = 
     (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(uri);
    request.Method = "GET";
    request.ContentType = "text/xml";

    HttpWebResponse response = 
     (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
    doc = new XmlDocument();
    doc.Load(response.GetResponseStream());
    response.Close();

    return doc;
}



static XmlDocument RestDelete(string uri)
{
    XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();

    HttpWebRequest request = 
     (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(uri);
    request.Method = "DELETE";
    request.ContentType = "text/xml";

    HttpWebResponse response = 
     (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
    doc = new XmlDocument();
    doc.Load(response.GetResponseStream());
    response.Close();

    return doc;
}


static XmlDocument RestPost(string uri, string data)
{
    XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();

    HttpWebRequest request = 
     (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(uri);
    request.Method = "POST";
    request.ContentType = "text/xml";

    System.Text.UTF8Encoding encoding = 
     new System.Text.UTF8Encoding();
    byte[] byte1 = encoding.GetBytes(data);
    request.ContentLength = byte1.Length;

    Stream requestStream = request.GetRequestStream();
    requestStream.Write(byte1, 0, byte1.Length);
    requestStream.Close();

    HttpWebResponse response = 
     (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
    doc = new XmlDocument();
    doc.Load(response.GetResponseStream());
    response.Close();

    return doc;
}