I have always had this setting enabled on our servers, & have never seen any problems caused by it, until now, I think.
I am actually nicking bits of the “Anatony of a Domino eCommerce web site” demo application from the SandBox (url below), & in it is a view that contains the HTML that makes up an HTML form. Below the view is a coded submit button, & when you press this, the browser bundles all the values in the form together & submits them. This is great, except that right in the middle of the URL requested is a ‘?’ question mark, instead of an ‘!’ exclamation mark. This, of course, is rejected by the Domino server, saying: HTTP Web Server: Couldn’t find design note - Basket!ReadForm&BasketID=UKNL-628TPV-20040623225457 [/dev/WebShop.nsf/Basket!ReadForm&BasketID=UKNL-628TPV-20040623225457?quantity=1&unid=5BD2BA925CF2BCC780256EBD0040C948… etc. etc. ]
Is this being automatically generated by the browser? If so, does this mean there is no way to get this to work without changing that setting? What impact would that have on Search engines? Does anyone know?
Actually, I’ve just realised that as I already have an ‘!’ & a parameter coded manually, I need to browser to use an ‘&’ ampersand, instead of ‘!’ or ‘?’
Thanks,
Paul Cutcliffe
URL: http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/today.nsf/f01245ebfc115aaf8525661a006b86b9/433d94b2e90846d7852569a7006bbb98?OpenDocument
Subject: Setting: “Make this site accessible to web search site crawlers” - causing problems with HTML form submission
What is actually the difference between the exclamation mark (!) and the question mark (?).I always use the ?mark like ?readform ?openView ?editDocument, etc. But now I found out that the browser (IE6 on XP) struggles with the ‘?’, the user is not allowed to see the page and he gets the login form again. Important note: the server is on a UNIX system, and the URL contains extra parameters.
Any idea’s how come?
Subject: Setting: “Make this site accessible to web search site crawlers” - causing problems with HTML form submission
Hi Paul,Posting an Form with method=get renders the string onto the url. And the first field is separated from the posting url by an “?” Since this is probably quite elegant to use ?Readform for rendering it has some linitations. The first one with the ! you did find out the hard way…
The next one: if you have sufficient long/much fields you hit the limit of the url lenght (btw. its an ugly url).
You actually dont need the ! setting. If you provide spider links without ? at the end…
Alternative approach to ?ReadForm:
a) Write a generic agent that takes a http post and extracts the fields. If a form is stated use computewithform to get the @formulas humming. Finally apply an XLST transformation to the DXL in result…
A little more extra work, but more flexible.
Buzz me if u want to know more.
stw
Subject: I didn’t understand some of your response…
… what did you mean by ‘You actually dont need the ! setting. If you provide spider links without ? at the end’ - how do you do that?
You completely lost me when suggested your ‘Alternative approach to ?ReadForm’ - would you like to expand a little on that?
Thanks.
Subject: RE: I didn’t understand some of your response…
What Stephan meant is that, absent any other query string, the default action for Domino is ?OpenWhatever (?OpenView, ?OpenDocument, ?OpenFrameset, ?OpenImageResource, etc.). If all you want to do is open an element (without feeding any other parameters in the query string), then you don’t need the query string at all. For instance, the link to your previous posting here could simply be:
http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/nd6forum.nsf/0/49ee0141de083c9485256ec10054354b
By avoiding the query string altogether, you also avoid any compatibility problems with search engines. Of course, it does mean that you need to code your own links, but that’s not nearly as much work as you may think.
Subject: Hold on, my HTML tag is missing from the page displayed by the browser!
When I view source, I see…
… when in fact I should see…
… but this tag is missing, & it seems that Domino has put its own tag in.
I realised this because it is not calling the Agent, it’s simply putting the field values on the end of the current page’s URL & resubmitting it.
Any idea why?
Subject: RE: Hold on, my HTML tag is missing from the page displayed by the browser!
In order for the Designer form to generate a name, method and action, you need to use either an ?EditDocument or an ?OpenForm query string in your URL. If you are using something like ?ReadForm, you’ll have to code the form tag yourself (on a “Treat contents as HTML” form).