[ale] Data encoding in a web page

Christopher Fowler cfowler at outpostsentinel.com
Sun Oct 19 09:14:01 EDT 2003


I've determined that HTTPClinents is doing the encoding.  Below you can see 
the value has been encoded.  What is trange is that there is not more
crap after the encoding like I see with Netscape and Konq.  The capture 
below is what I've caught the Java program sending.

POST /myverification/Search.aspx HTTP/1.1
Host: 127.0.0.1
Connection: Keep-Alive, TE
TE: trailers, deflate, gzip, compress
User-Agent: RPT-HTTPClient/0.3-3E
Accept-Encoding: deflate, gzip, x-gzip, compress, x-compress
Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-length: 900

__EVENTTARGET=&__EVENTARGUMENT=&__VIEWSTATE=dDwyMTQxMjc4NDIxO3Q8O2w8aTwxPjs%2BO2w8dDw7bDxpPDA%2BOz47bDx0PDtsPGk8MT47PjtsPHQ8O2w8aTwxPjs%2BO2w8dDw7bDxpPDE%2BOz47bDx0PDtsPGk8Mj47aTwzPjtpPDk%2BO2k8MTI%2BOz47bDx0PDtsPGk8MT47PjtsPHQ8O2w8aTwwPjs%2BO2w8dDx0PDs7bDxpPDA%2BOz4%2BOzs%2BOz4%2BOz4%2BO3Q8O2w8aTwxPjs%2BO2w8dDw7bDxpPDA%2BOz47bDx0PHQ8OztsPGk8MD47Pj47Oz47Pj47Pj47dDw7bDxpPDE%2BOz47bDx0PDtsPGk8MD47PjtsPHQ8dDw7O2w8aTwwPjs%2BPjs7Pjs%2BPjs%2BPjt0PDtsPGk8MT47PjtsPHQ8O2w8aTwwPjs%2BO2w8dDx0PDs7bDxpPDA%2BOz4%2BOzs%2BOz4%2BOz4%2BOz4%2BOz4%2BOz4%2BOz4%2BOz4%2BOz4%2BOz5ZeStnfajPMQ9tQDyvFfTUkgUDJg%3D%3D&t_web_lookup__profession_name=&t_web_lookup__license_type_name=&t_web_lookup__first_name=&t_web_lookup__last_name=&t_web_lookup__license_no=RN78&t_web_lookup__license_status_name=&t_web_lookup__addr_county=&t_web_lookup__addr_city=&t_web_lookup__addr_state=&t_web_lookup__addr_zipcode=&sch_button=Search



On Sun, Oct 19, 2003 at 08:06:45AM -0400, J.M. Taylor wrote:
> Chris,
> 
> As to how Netscape knows to do it, it's built into the http protocol, see
> w3.org.  Post vars get sent exactly like Get/Put vars (ie, URL encoded,
> ie, with special chars converted to their ascii equivs).
> 
> Browsers must send data this way.  As to what's the difference, my only
> real guess would be that certain special chars are reserved by the browser
> (ie: ? = and & ) and so it's better to urlencode so that the browser
> doesn't get erroneous data.  Also, when they send data from a textarea
> they have to encode the newlines or the data wouldn't all come in on that
> absurdly long string.
> 
> Thankfully, this is one area that MS has decided to play by the rules.
> 
> Speaking of the absurdly long string and textareas, does anybody know how
> much data can be passed via POST (not individual fields, but the whole
> entire form as a single entity)?  I looked everywhere, w3 doesn't have it
> as part of the http specification but surely there's an upper limit to how
> much data can be passed...
> 
> Ciao
> jenn
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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