Question

I’m working with an old ASP WebForms page in which there is a link which opens in a new windo using javascript. This link includes a GET-parameter, like this:

<href="javascript:window.open(http://myurl.com?MyId=123).focus()">
    Search for object
</a>

What I would like to do is replace this GET-parameter with a Post-variable in order to avoid the value of MyId being stored in the browser-history. Possibly something like:

<input type="hidden" id="MyId" name="MyId" value="123">
<a href="submitSearchCriteria()">
    Search for object
</a>

Note: Since this is a webforms page, the whole contents of the page is within a pair of <form>...</form> tags which post back to the page itself, and I don`t want to mess with these. The page I would like to link to is another page.

My question: Is there some fairly simple, clean and safe way to pass along a Post-variable from within a link like this? I would prefer to do this without including any third-party java script libraries if possible (I want to minimize the necessary changes to an aging system).

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Add your MyId in your form:

<input type="hidden" id="MyId" name="MyId" value="123">

Then your hyperlink:

<a href="#" onclick="submit()">Search for object</a>

Then use javascript to change your form action:

function submit(){
 [Your Form].action = "[Your Action]";
 [Your Form].submit();
}

The form submits but as the page refreshes, the form action goes back to what it was before. But this could depend to where you point back your new action. You could add something to handle the response. This is the easiest solution if you ask me. But for the cleanest, you should try reading about AJAX.