HowTo: URL rewrite to redirect HTTP to HTTPS for non-local address

Below is an answer on how to redirect from HTTP to HTTPS using the URL Rewrite module for IIS, but ignoring local addresses used when debugging one’s app. Just contributed at https://stackoverflow.com/a/75898224/903783.

Needed it for an ASP.net MVC app I’m maintaining, since due to updated policy that the authenticating organisation had decided for the SSO (Apereo CAS) configuration, we couldn’t redirect anymore back to a non-HTTPs URL (had the user used plain HTTP to access our app that is), after signing in succesfully via the SSO.

Combined URL Rewrite based answers from How to redirect HTTP to HTTPS in MVC application (IIS7.5) and from the question’s page on StackOverflow, and added "127.0.0.1" apart from “localhost” for the ignored sites.

Note that the URL Rewrite approach is by far the simplest one to add and should kick in at the web server level before the web app has any chance to process the request.

I also see {REQUEST_URI} being used instead of {R:1} and pattern="^OFF$" instead of pattern="off".

At pattern added the ignoreCase="true" too, though it might be the default (same goes for enabled="true" for the rule, handy to have there if you want to turn some rule off when debugging some rule chain)

However, wondering based on https://serverfault.com/questions/224039/iis-url-rewrite-http-to-https-with-port/418530#418530 if one needs to use SERVER_NAME instead of HTTP_HOST in the pattern if non-default ports are used and specify the port in the Redirect url too

  <system.webServer>

  <!-- … -->

    <rewrite>
        <rules>

            <rule name="HTTP to HTTPS redirect (excluding localhost)" enabled="true" 
                  stopProcessing="true">
                <match url="(.*)" />
                <conditions>
                    <add input="{HTTPS}" pattern="off" ignoreCase="true" />
                    <add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="localhost" negate="true" />
                    <add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="127.0.0.1" negate="true" />
                </conditions>
                <action type="Redirect" redirectType="Permanent" 
                        url="https://{HTTP_HOST}/{R:1}" />
            </rule>

        </rules>
    </rewrite>

  <!-- … -->

</system.webServer>

HowTo: Reset browser cache of CSS files upon ASP.net MVC app publish

On an ASP.net MVC webapp I’m maintaining, I had the issue that due to caching of older CSS (stylesheet) files in the browser, if the user didn’t press F5/refresh, it wasn’t showing you some message (since I had added the class .center-horiz-vert in the CSS that didn’t exist in the older cached css the browser had).

Instead of changing web.config to stop cachine of CSS files (in which case it would bring the CSS on every page load which is an overkill), I expanded on an idea mentioned by Maxim Kornilov on SO (https://stackoverflow.com/a/12992813/903783), on making the CSS URLs webapp version specific.

I added a fake version parameter to the URLs with the build number as value so that till I publish a new build the browser caches the CSS, but when I upload a new build it brings the new one since it cache with the url as a key (that now includes the build number as a dummy url parameter that the webserver will ignore and just fetch the CSS file when requested)

Maxim’s example was in ASP/ASP.net WebForms syntax instead of MVC’s and Razor Pages’ newer Razor syntax), so I contributed my solution for the case of an ASP.net MVC webapp that wants to serve a fresh copy of CSS files on every new build that you publish (will do this whether the CSS file has changed or not) so that browsers don’t use older cached copies of the file. Obviously this expands to any kind of files you link/load into your webpages via a URL.

1) Added to the webapp’s main class (was called MvcApplication) in Global.asax.cs

#region Versioning

public static string Version => 
  typeof(MvcApplication).Assembly.GetName().Version.ToString(); 
                         //note: syntax requires C# version >=6

public static DateTime LastUpdated =>
  File.GetLastWriteTime(typeof(MvcApplication).Assembly.Location);

#endregion

the someProperty => someReadOnlyExpression syntax is just shorthand for someProperty { get { return … ;} } possible since C# 6

2) in its Content/_Layout.cshtml file I used to have the following to show build number and build datetime (based on the webapp’s main assembly) on the page footer:

Version @ViewContext.Controller.GetType().Assembly.GetName().Version 
(@string.Format("{0:yyyy/MM/dd-HH:mm:ss}", 
  @File.GetLastWriteTime(ViewContext.Controller.GetType().Assembly.Location)))

which I changed to the simpler:

Version @somewebappname.MvcApplication.Version
(@string.Format("{0:yyyy/MM/dd-HH:mm:ss}", 
   somewebappname.MvcApplication.LastUpdated))

3) it was loading the CSS via hardcoded link in _Layout.cshtml (still refactoring it) which I changed to:

<link href='@Url.Content("~/Content/Site.css?version=" + 
somewebappname.MvcApplication.Version)' rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> 

so if one right-clicks in the webpage and they do view source they see:

<link href='/Content/Site.css?version=2.1.5435.22633' 
  rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> 

that is the CSS url is version specific thanks to the dummy parameter version

If a random number was used instead it would fetch the CSS at every page load which is usually undesired, especially if you are already pushing a new webapp build instead of individual page changes to the web server (so that you do have access to a build number that you can inject into URLs).

Note that to achieve auto-incrementing of build number, at Properties/AssemblyInfo.cs I have (see How to have an auto incrementing version number (Visual Studio)?):

// Version information for an assembly consists of the following four values:
//
//      Major Version
//      Minor Version 
//      Build Number
//      Revision
//
// You can specify all the values or you can default the Revision 
// and Build Numbers by using the '*' as shown below:
[assembly: AssemblyVersion("1.0.*")]
//[assembly: AssemblyFileVersion("1.0.*")] 
//  don't use boh AssemblyVersion and AssemblyFileVersion with auto-increment

HowTo: change color of validation messages in ASP.net MVC

If you need to customize the colors (or do more restyling) of validation messages in ASP.net MVC, the following snippet from a discussion on ASP.net forums should be useful:

Add to Content/Site.css:

/* styles for validation helpers */

.field-validation-error {
    color: #b94a48;
}

.field-validation-valid {
    display: none;
}

input.input-validation-error {
    border: 1px solid #b94a48;
}

select.input-validation-error {
    border: 1px solid #b94a48;
}

input[type="checkbox"].input-validation-error {
    border: 0 none;
}

.validation-summary-errors {
    color: #b94a48;
}

.validation-summary-valid {
    display: none;
}

Other useful replies from there:

@Html.ValidationSummary(true,"",new {@style= "color: red"})

The method for MVC 5 + Bootstrap is:
@Html.ValidationSummary(true, "", new { @class = "text-danger" })

HowTo: include MVC model property Display name in Required validation message

Just came across this validation error display in an MVC app I’ve recently started maintaining. The required input field validation seemed to not be localized, resulting in a mixed English and Greek (from the field’s Display name) message:

Looking at the MVC model I noticed they were using [Required] attributes for the userName and password properties, together with [Display(Name = "…")] for the displayed property title

public class LoginModel
  {
     [Required]
     [Display(Name = "Όνομα Χρήστη")]
     public string userName { get; set; }

     [Required]
     [DataType(DataType.Password)]
     [Display(Name = "Κωδικός")]
     public string password { get; set; }

     //…

That was changed to:

public class LoginModel
  {
     [Required(ErrorMessage = "Το {0} είναι απαραίτητο.")]
     [Display(Name = "Όνομα Χρήστη")]
     public string userName { get; set; }

     [Required(ErrorMessage = "Το {0} είναι απαραίτητο.")]
     [DataType(DataType.Password)]
     [Display(Name = "Κωδικός")]
     public string password { get; set; }

resulting in a fully localized validation error message with the respective property’s Display name auto-inserted in the validation ErrorMessage, thanks to the {0} used in the message string:

Note there’s also the lazy route like in this property:

[Display(Name = "Περίοδος Εγγύησης(Έτη):")]
[Required(ErrorMessage = "Απαραίτητο πεδίο")]
public int warrantyPeriod { get; set; }

where you just say something like “Required field” in the localized error message. This however will work only when you always show the error message next to the input field that fails to pass validation.

If you want to also show a validation summary say at the beginning and/or the end of the page (depending on where your submit button is), you’ll end up with an error summary that may just contain multiple entries of “Required field” text without any indication on what field it was (which would be practically useless that is).

Note that sometimes due to lack of space in a webpage (say if you have lots of input fields in a grid) you can only show say red “*” near input fields that have validation errors and explain them more in the tooltips and in an error summary control.

Even better you can use resource strings to avoid error message string duplication. That approach, though a bit more verbose as implemented in ASP.net means easier centralized maintenance and localization from a per locale/language resource file and less typos or slightly different error messages for the same thing. See example and related screenshots at https://stackoverflow.com/a/22849638

Fix: jQuery’s jqGrid search UI custom styling

Lately, I’ve got the task of maintaining/extending an ASP.net MVC web application that is using jQuery’s jqGrid for data grids on its UI. First thing I noticed was how confusing the search UI on the grid’s header was:

Those symbols on the left-side of each column’s searchbox are for the type of search (e.g. contains, doesn’t contain, equals, starts with, doesn’t start with, ends with, doesn’t end with).

Bit too many options and using programming-related symbols that probably intimidate several users in my opinion:

But the worse is the “x” button (that clears the searchbox) on the right of each searchbox, that combined with the search-type symbols makes the whole search bar look like some strange mathematical expression.

So using the browser dev tools (F12) and some CSS rules I quickly restyled that search bar to make it more appealing UI/UX wise:

Added a border around the “x” button that clears the searchbox and offseted using a negative margin so that the searchbox and it fuse together visually on their sides. Also made the search-type symbol (that opens the search-type selection popup when clicked) of lighter color. It may look a bit-like some disabled thing like that, but at least it should confuse average users less with its use of technical symbols like that.

Just need to add the rules above at the ASP.net MVC app’s Site.css (probably to be found at the Content subfolder of the webapp) and remember to press F5/Refresh in one’s browser in case the old styling still appears due to caching.

Update #1:

I noticed on older versions of Windows (other than Windows 10 that is) that bevels were showing at the text inputs, leading to this ugly effect:

So I had to add some more rules to remove the bevel borders and use a consistent border color.

Removing the bevels seemed to also remove the inner padding of the text inputs, so added a padding of 2px and some box-sizing rules to make sure the padding doesn’t affect the input’s size.

/* OS-independent styling for input and textarea borders */
textarea,
input[type="text"],
input[type="password"] {
    border-style: solid;
    border-width: 1px;
    border-color: gray;
    padding: 2px;
    -webkit-box-sizing: border-box; /* Safari/Chrome, other WebKit */
    -moz-box-sizing: border-box; /* Firefox, other Gecko */
    box-sizing: border-box; /* Opera/IE 8+ */
}

Update #2:

After recently updating some jQuery related NuGet packages in that ASP.net project, I noticed the [x] button was showing a bit higher up at the bottom compared to the search box. The fix to that was to add padding-bottom: 1px; at the CSS declaration for clearsearchclass in Content/Site.css

a.clearsearchclass {
    border-width: 1px;
    border-style: solid;
    /* border-left-style: none; */
    margin-left: -3px;
    padding-bottom: 1px; /* seems to be needed with newer jQuery.UI */
    background: whitesmoke;
    border-color: gray;
}