how to send a serialized string to asp?

Question

I'm getting a headache trying to parse an MDX member from a $.get request through to a .asmx file;

initially my request looked like this; $.get("/" + source + ".asmx/FilterData", {strKeyval: queryName, controlID: currentID, filterString: filterString},

where filterString's value is; [Product].[Product].[Dept No].&[123]

I was getting a server side error though and figured it was the ampersand, so on the advice of Rory in this question, I tried the escape() function, but now I'm getting this error from the asmx file, because of the % symbols;

Parser: The following syntax error occurred during parsing: Invalid token, Line 1, offset 499, %

how do I make asp accept this? I never have this problem with php!

Answer 1

Ok, so after tearing and wrecking my brain, I found a simpler solution than I'd have thought would have worked:

I removed the escape() function entirely as well as any serialization I used before and simply replaced the &s with html encoded ampersands like this;

filterString = filterString.replace("&", "\\u0026");

works nicely, I wish ASP and Microsoft would stop being so anal, they should deal with security risks rather than avoid it

Answer 2

You can configure your asmx service to accept POST requests:

In web.config:

<webServices>
    <protocols>
        <add name="HttpGet"/>
        <add name="HttpPost"/>
    </protocols>
</webServices>

And instead of $.get use $.post. If use post the data will be sent in the request's body and you won't need to escape the '&'