response.redirect vs server.transfer and PostBackURL

Almost everyone knows about response.redirect.  Response.redirect simply sends a request to the client asking for the page to be redirected to the requested URL.  This is generally a very easy to use method, but there are a lot of downfalls.

First being you loose all form data on the redirect, so you have to sit there and figure out what was lost, which normally isn’t the case.  Second you’re sending yet another request to the server.  More lag, less performance.

Server.Transfer is an excellent choice for certain pages!  Like submission pages that may require multiple pages or resources.  You can transfer the code over to another file without having the client even know they are looking at another page!  The url doesn’t change or anything.  Beautiful choice!  I myself am planing on using this method on a search page, with the help of querystrings to store bookmarking information.

The downside of Server.Transfer is the fact that you do loose the ability to bookmark in most cases!  Again this can be overcome by using a querystring value.  Also debugging can be a bit harder, but again not a huge deal since you can typically undrstand where the problem is ahead of time. 

As far as the last, PostBackURL.  One of my biggest problems with asp.net is that pesky postback!  Always wants to show the page name.  The reason is .Net likes to do everything from the server, which it should, but as a result it shows the page name.

My urls are typically like… http://www.mysite/home/ which leaves the page name hidden.  Extra bit of security!  Well when asp.net sends a postback it comes out like… http://www.mysite/home/index.aspx which then tells the useres, hey this guy uses aspx!  I know some aspx!  Let’s go ahead and try to hack it.  Ok it sounds funny, but you forget most of your hackers are teenagers with nothing better to do.  So always hide as much as possible!

PostBackURL lets you do this!  I’ll include some VB code to help you out with getting to the same page without manually typing it in:

“http://” & Request.ServerVariables(“SERVER_NAME”) & Left(Request.ServerVariables(“URL”),InStrRev(Request.ServerVariables(“URL”),”/”))

Really simple code that returns the same page your on without showing the page name.  Just throw that in with your PostBackURL property and you’re good to go.  Anyway I hope that helps you all out.