Question about input to ?path= parameter and URL encoding.

[Anonymous]

So, presume I have a DWF file located on my web site and to reach it I have to pass a few parameters to my web site.

Something like: http://www.mysite.com/getmyfile?folder=foldername&file=filename

If I use this standalone in the browser all is well and I get my .dwf file.

However if I try to pass this as part of the path= parameter as in:

http://freewheel.autodesk.com/dwf.aspx?path=http://mysite.com/getmyfile?folder=A&file=B

Then the "&file=B" will always get stripped as if it were a parameter to freewheel instead of being passed through to my website. This seems to be the case regardless of how I may try to escape it.

So, I'm looking for a way to tell freewheel to ignore this parameter.

Any suggestions? Note that for various reasons I do not have the flexibility to change the parameters to the "getmyfile" routine. so suggesting that I change the parameters mysite needs is not an option.

Could freewheel be changed to pass-through any parameters it doesn't recognize as it's own?

I'll watch for comments here, however if you have any pearls of wisdom to share I'd love to get them at sbower@stevebower.com as well. 🙂

Thanks, Steve.

[Anonymous]

I will ask around regarding this.

wrote in message news:5665607@discussion.autodesk.com...
So, presume I have a DWF file located on my web site and to reach it I have
to pass a few parameters to my web site.

Something like:
http://www.mysite.com/getmyfile?folder=foldername&file=filename

If I use this standalone in the browser all is well and I get my .dwf file.

However if I try to pass this as part of the path= parameter as in:

http://freewheel.autodesk.com/dwf.aspx?path=http://mysite.com/getmyfile?folder=A&file=B

Then the "&file=B" will always get stripped as if it were a parameter to
freewheel instead of being passed through to my website. This seems to be
the case regardless of how I may try to escape it.

So, I'm looking for a way to tell freewheel to ignore this parameter.

Any suggestions? Note that for various reasons I do not have the
flexibility to change the parameters to the "getmyfile" routine. so
suggesting that I change the parameters mysite needs is not an option.

Could freewheel be changed to pass-through any parameters it doesn't
recognize as it's own?

I'll watch for comments here, however if you have any pearls of wisdom to
share I'd love to get them at sbower@stevebower.com as well. 🙂

Thanks, Steve.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Scott. I appreciate any help you can give me. Steve.

[Anonymous]

Yes, this is a know bug in production freewheel. But is has been fixed in
the labs version of freewheel.

This is an example that I found with a Google search
http://dwfit.com/dwf_S.aspx?path=http%3a%2f%2fwww.pde-services.com%2fimages%2fBASEMENT+PIPE-M2.6+PIPE.dwf



Ben


wrote in message news:5665607@discussion.autodesk.com...
So, presume I have a DWF file located on my web site and to reach it I have
to pass a few parameters to my web site.

Something like:
http://www.mysite.com/getmyfile?folder=foldername&file=filename

If I use this standalone in the browser all is well and I get my .dwf file.

However if I try to pass this as part of the path= parameter as in:

http://freewheel.autodesk.com/dwf.aspx?path=http://mysite.com/getmyfile?folder=A&file=B

Then the "&file=B" will always get stripped as if it were a parameter to
freewheel instead of being passed through to my website. This seems to be
the case regardless of how I may try to escape it.

So, I'm looking for a way to tell freewheel to ignore this parameter.

Any suggestions? Note that for various reasons I do not have the
flexibility to change the parameters to the "getmyfile" routine. so
suggesting that I change the parameters mysite needs is not an option.

Could freewheel be changed to pass-through any parameters it doesn't
recognize as it's own?

I'll watch for comments here, however if you have any pearls of wisdom to
share I'd love to get them at sbower@stevebower.com as well. 🙂

Thanks, Steve.

[Anonymous]

Hi Ben, Thanks for your help, however I still seem to have the same problem when using the Lab version.

If you look at your example carefully you're not really passing any parameters to the URL at pde-services.com. The "%2f" resolves to a slash which is working fine.

The problem is when I try to pass some parameters with a &. For example:

http://freewheel.autodesk.com/dwf.aspx?path=http://mysite.com/getmyfile?folder=A&file=B

The parameter that is getting stripped out is the "&file=B" parameter.

Any thoughts?

Sadly, I don't have a simple example of this to show you since I'm pulling this from a third party system and one of the parameters I need to pass is a time-based security parameter which would expire in a few minutes

In theory however, is it generally true that any URL that I can reach with my browser which will download a .dwf file should be passing through unchanged?

Do you have any issues with httpS urls?

Thanks, Steve..

[Anonymous]

I think this is fixed on an internal server we have. It will be included in
the next Project Freewheel update on Autodesk Labs. Before you ask, we don't
announce release dates in advance. Too much can change. We don't want to
disappoint anyone. So we work on them and when they are ready, we release
them.

wrote in message news:5669847@discussion.autodesk.com...
Hi Ben, Thanks for your help, however I still seem to have the same problem
when using the Lab version.

If you look at your example carefully you're not really passing any
parameters to the URL at pde-services.com. The "%2f" resolves to a slash
which is working fine.

The problem is when I try to pass some parameters with a &. For example:

http://freewheel.autodesk.com/dwf.aspx?path=http://mysite.com/getmyfile?folder=A&file=B

The parameter that is getting stripped out is the "&file=B" parameter.

Any thoughts?

Sadly, I don't have a simple example of this to show you since I'm pulling
this from a third party system and one of the parameters I need to pass is a
time-based security parameter which would expire in a few minutes

In theory however, is it generally true that any URL that I can reach with
my browser which will download a .dwf file should be passing through
unchanged?

Do you have any issues with httpS urls?

Thanks, Steve..

[Anonymous]

Scott is correct. I am sorry for any confusion. I was looking at an internal
server.

Ben

"Scott Sheppard - Autodesk" wrote in message
news:5670467@discussion.autodesk.com...
I think this is fixed on an internal server we have. It will be included in
the next Project Freewheel update on Autodesk Labs. Before you ask, we don't
announce release dates in advance. Too much can change. We don't want to
disappoint anyone. So we work on them and when they are ready, we release
them.

wrote in message news:5669847@discussion.autodesk.com...
Hi Ben, Thanks for your help, however I still seem to have the same problem
when using the Lab version.

If you look at your example carefully you're not really passing any
parameters to the URL at pde-services.com. The "%2f" resolves to a slash
which is working fine.

The problem is when I try to pass some parameters with a &. For example:

http://freewheel.autodesk.com/dwf.aspx?path=http://mysite.com/getmyfile?folder=A&file=B

The parameter that is getting stripped out is the "&file=B" parameter.

Any thoughts?

Sadly, I don't have a simple example of this to show you since I'm pulling
this from a third party system and one of the parameters I need to pass is a
time-based security parameter which would expire in a few minutes

In theory however, is it generally true that any URL that I can reach with
my browser which will download a .dwf file should be passing through
unchanged?

Do you have any issues with httpS urls?

Thanks, Steve..

[Anonymous]

Ah... ok, thanks for the help guys. I'm working on an integration with a third party on-demand service and I need to pass some ugly parameter strings through Freewheel as the source URL for the .dwf file.

Looking forward to the next update. 🙂 Steve.

[Anonymous]

Hi people,

I just wanna ask, why don't you enable "upload" approach instead of "here-is-url-then-download-it-from-my-site-which-cannot-be-reached-from-your-server" approach.

It would be much easier to POST the .DWF file to get the preview. I mean what if the server is protected by SSL/certificates/has authentication?? How can I pass, and why would I pass all these params to the autodesk site? It would be a security breach.

And besides, those "requests" (posts) can be filtered if not desired. So no reason why not to support "POST .dwf"-"Get preview" ("upload") approach.

Does this makes sense to you?

Thanx,
G.

[Anonymous]

I don't know if this is too late to add to this, but let me point out
that you're trying to pass the parameter to Freewheel.

My understanding is that you have a situation like this:
Your file is at http://mysite.com/getmyfile?folder=A&file=B

You're trying to pass this to Freewheel, that takes this path as a URL
parameter:
http://freewheel.autodesk.com/dwf.aspx?path=YOUR_PATH

Since it's a URI component, YOUR_PATH should be encoded accordingly,
otherwise the browser will think that it's a set of URI components that
you would like to pass to Freewheel, even though it's something your
server needs to get, not Freewheel.

So, if you say:

http://freewheel.autodesk.com/dwf.aspx?path=http://mysite.com/getmyfile?folder=A&file=B

that will result in Freewheel getting this on the server side
(essentially taking the URL apart along the '&'-s):
path: http://mysite.com/getmyfile?folder=A
file: B

or something similar.

Instead, you'd like Freewheel to get this:
path: http://mysite.com/getmyfile?folder=A&file=B

Which means, that you need to encode your URL as a URI Component. This
would result in this:
http://freewheel.autodesk.com/dwf.aspx?path=http%3A%2F%2Fmysite.com%2Fgetmyfile%3Ffolder%3DA%26file%3DB

For further information, you should look into URL and URI encoding.


sbower wrote:
> Ah... ok, thanks for the help guys. I'm working on an integration with a third party on-demand service and I need to pass some ugly parameter strings through Freewheel as the source URL for the .dwf file.

>
> Looking forward to the next update. 🙂 Steve.