paste news article from word and save in db

I have news articles that get written in MS Word and I want to be able to insert these into the db to be displayed on my website. What would be the best way of doing this and how would I keep line breaks ect? Thanks

Re: paste news article from word and save in db

you can read more here : http://www.asp.net/web-pages/tutorials/data/5-working-with-data and could use this code to enter news articles into the db :

@{
    Layout = "";
    Page.Title = "";
    
    var db = Database.Open("dbname");

    var Title = Request["Title"];
    var Content = Request["Content"];
    var Date = Request["Date"];


    if (IsPost) {
            var insertQuery = "INSERT INTO newsarticles (Title, Content, Date) " +
                "VALUES (@0, @1, @2)";
            db.Execute(insertQuery, Title, Content, Date);
    }
}


   <h2>Add news Articles</h2>

   

   <form method="post" action="">
           <div>
               <p>Date:
               <input name="Date" type="text" size="30" value="@Date" />
               </p>
               <p>Title:
               <textarea name="Title" rows="3" cols="74">@Title</textarea>
               </p>
               <p>
               Content:
               <textarea name="Content" rows="14" cols="74">@Content</textarea>
               </p>
               <input type="submit" value="Add" />
           </div>
   </form>

And use this new page to display :

@{  
    Layout = "";
    Page.Title = "";
    
    var pageSize = 10; 
    var totalPages = 0; 
    var count = 0;
    var page = UrlData[0].IsInt() ? UrlData[0].AsInt() : 1;
    var offset = (page -1) * pageSize;
    
    var db = Database.Open("dbname");
    var sql = @"SELECT Count(*) FROM newsarticles ";
            
    count = (int)db.QueryValue(sql);
    totalPages = count/pageSize;        
    if(count % pageSize > 0){
        totalPages += 1;
    }
    sql = "SELECT Title, Content, Date FROM newsarticles" +
               "ORDER BY Id DESC OFFSET @0 ROWS FETCH NEXT @1 ROWS ONLY;";
    
    var result = db.Query(sql, offset, pageSize);
}

<h2>News Articles</h2>


    @foreach(var row in result){
    <p>@row.Date<br/>
    <strong>@row.Title</strong><br/>
    @Html.Raw(row.Content.Replace("\n", "<br />"))
    </p>
    }
    <p>
    @{
        for (var i = 1; i < totalPages + 1; i++){
            <a href="/informations/@i">@i</a>
        }
    }
    <span class="alignRight">&nbsp; Page @page / @totalPages</span>
    </p>

You can keep line breaks by using

@Html.Raw(row.Content.Replace("\n", "<br />"))

Re: paste news article from word and save in db

I assume the reason you are posting from word is to be able to use the formating that you added while in word. There are two ways I can think of to do this.

1 make the final document an image and save that to the database. You could also save it as a pdf. An image can easily be saved to a database. These may have scaling issues depending on the screen size and resolution. As an example, online magazines are having to reformat their pages to match the new retena display.

2 Include a Rich Text frame in your web site. This also allows some significant security risks and there are some compatability issues that you need to resolve. This frame allows some of the rich text but it is likely moderated and scanned.

Re: paste news article from word and save in db

tHanks for that suggestion I think that should do what I need. Not sure if I'll loose formatting in the copy past process but I'll do some testing.

Re: paste news article from word and save in db

Thanks Craig, I think I'll check out the rtf frames that you mention. I don't think I want to start storing images of text into the database if I can do it another way. Thanks for the tip

Re: paste news article from word and save in db

the one I used was tinymce although there others. Most are javascript plugins that are implimented in a textarea.

I'll be happy to answer any questions you have on this. I may save you several hours and probably help me understand it better too.

Re: paste news article from word and save in db

Thanks I'll start with checking out tinymce and see how that helps.

Re: paste news article from word and save in db

TinyMCE seems really very good although I'm having one problem. When posting back my form data I get the following message:

A potentially dangerous Request.Form value was detected from the client (article="<p><strong>Rich Text...").

I've tried @Html.Encode on the Request[""] object but that doesn't seem to help me, have you seen this before?

Re: paste news article from word and save in db

Maybe this link could help you: TinyMCE and A potentially dangerous Request.Form value was detected

Re: paste news article from word and save in db

Yes, that is one of the problems with merging Javascript and Razor. Any escaping that is done in the Javascript is removed by the request object in the razor section. You will have to use the request.unvalidated().form call to get any of the html that you want to send to razor code. Keep in mind that this data could contain dangerous code such as SQL Injection so you should also escape it immediatly with server.htmlencode if you plan to save it to a database.

This is the reason for your getting that warning. The data in Rich Text can contain harmful scripts and you need to keep that in mind when using it.

Re: paste news article from word and save in db

Yea not ideal, I've managed to get round it by turning the validation off

great editor though so thanks for pointing me towards that

Re: paste news article from word and save in db

craig_inb
Keep in mind that this data could contain dangerous code such as SQL Injection

The Request Validation feature in ASP.NET does not protect against SQL Injection. It is there to protect against potential XSS attacks (http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2011/04/28/preventing-javascript-encoding-xss-attacks-in-asp-net-mvc.aspx). You use input validation and parameters for dynamic values in database commands to protect against SQL injection.