Hopefully this isn’t a redundant question–I’m not really sure how to word it. Let’s say I have a list of items on an ASP.net page. That list is selectable in that whenever the user clicks on one, the page does a postback and the server code stores the index or some unique identifier of the picture in a ViewState property indicating that it is currently selected.
I would like to minimize the load on the server and therefore I would like to store the index or unique identifier representing the image in some way on the client side. The best way I can think to do this is to store said information in a hidden field ), however I had two questions about this before I go crazy:
-
Is this a security risk in any way, shape or form (i.e., exposing implementation details of the page)?
-
Is there a better/best way to do this that is more industry-standard? Does ASP.net provide a framework to do this that is cleaner than my idea? Seems like this would be a fairly common requirement to me…
I have been working in ASP.net for about two years now. Please, be kind 🙂
Best,
Patrick Kozub
The only security risk would be if some list items must remain non-selectable. It sounds like that is not the case in your situation. The user already knows the information, because he or she already selected the item.
NOTE: If the server ever does anything with that information and pulls it back from the user, then you must validate the index value. Otherwise, the user could change it to an invalid index, such as (-2), and trigger an exception.
You can store the index (or related value) in a global javascript variable. If you’re avoiding a trip back to the server, .NET doesn’t really have a role to play.