Microsoft .NET Server Solutions for the Enterprise

Object Support for Non-Catalog Navigation

The GetURL method of the AuthManager object provides the most common generic navigation support offered by the Commerce Server objects. If the retail Web site is designed to be as browser-independent as possible, it is important that the server-side scripts that are used to create the pages that constitute the Web site include links that have very robust, yet plain, HREF URLs. The GetURL method provides a mechanism for generating such URLs for use within a retail Web site. It converts the relative URLs used within the site script, which is important to maintain portability, to absolute URLs. It provides support for authentication and security, appending authentication information to URLs when cookies are disabled. And it allows an arbitrary number of URL query string parameters to be specified, making it possible to create generic pages for displaying dynamic content such as is required for product pages.

Commerce Server 2002 provides some different ways to access the GetURL method (and its associated methods UrlShopperArgs, or UrlArgs) of the AuthManager object as .NET managed code. The Commerce Server Primary Interop Assembly (PIA) provides access to the AuthManager object using the namespace Microsoft.CommerceServer.Interop. The Commerce Server Base Class Libraries (BCL) provides access to the AuthManager object through several versions of the BuildURL method of the QueryStringBuilder class using the namespace Microsoft.CommerceServer.Runtime.