C# – A potentially dangerous Request.Path value was detected from the client (*)

asp.netcroutingurlwebforms

I am receiving the rather self explanatory error:

A potentially dangerous Request.Path value was detected from the client (*).

The issue is due to * in the request URL:

https://stackoverflow.com/Search/test*/0/1/10/1

This url is used to populate a search page where 'test*' is the search term and the rest of the url relates to various other filters.

Is there an easy way to allow these special characters in the URL? I've tried modifying the web.config, to no avail.

Should I manually encode / decode the special characters?
Or is there a best practice for doing this, I would like to avoid using query strings. – but it may be an option.

The application itself is a c# asp.net webforms application that uses routing to produce the nice URL above.

Best Answer

If you're using .NET 4.0 you should be able to allow these urls via the web.config

<system.web>
    <httpRuntime 
            requestPathInvalidCharacters="&lt;,&gt;,%,&amp;,:,\,?" />
</system.web>

Note, I've just removed the asterisk (*), the original default string is:

<httpRuntime 
          requestPathInvalidCharacters="&lt;,&gt;,*,%,&amp;,:,\,?" />

See this question for more details.

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Asp.net-mvc – A potentially dangerous Request.Form value was detected from the client

I think you are attacking it from the wrong angle by trying to encode all posted data.

Note that a "<" could also come from other outside sources, like a database field, a configuration, a file, a feed and so on.

Furthermore, "<" is not inherently dangerous. It's only dangerous in a specific context: when writing strings that haven't been encoded to HTML output (because of XSS).

In other contexts different sub-strings are dangerous, for example, if you write an user-provided URL into a link, the sub-string "javascript:" may be dangerous. The single quote character on the other hand is dangerous when interpolating strings in SQL queries, but perfectly safe if it is a part of a name submitted from a form or read from a database field.

The bottom line is: you can't filter random input for dangerous characters, because any character may be dangerous under the right circumstances. You should encode at the point where some specific characters may become dangerous because they cross into a different sub-language where they have special meaning. When you write a string to HTML, you should encode characters that have special meaning in HTML, using Server.HtmlEncode. If you pass a string to a dynamic SQL statement, you should encode different characters (or better, let the framework do it for you by using prepared statements or the like)..

When you are sure you HTML-encode everywhere you pass strings to HTML, then set ValidateRequest="false" in the <%@ Page ... %> directive in your .aspx file(s).

In .NET 4 you may need to do a little more. Sometimes it's necessary to also add <httpRuntime requestValidationMode="2.0" /> to web.config (reference).

C# – Get int value from enum in C#

Just cast the enum, e.g.

int something = (int) Question.Role;

The above will work for the vast majority of enums you see in the wild, as the default underlying type for an enum is int.

However, as cecilphillip points out, enums can have different underlying types. If an enum is declared as a uint, long, or ulong, it should be cast to the type of the enum; e.g. for

enum StarsInMilkyWay:long {Sun = 1, V645Centauri = 2 .. Wolf424B = 2147483649};

you should use

long something = (long)StarsInMilkyWay.Wolf424B;

Best Answer

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Asp.net-mvc – A potentially dangerous Request.Form value was detected from the client

C# – Get int value from enum in C#

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