Passing arguments to URL Shortcuts

It is possible to pass arguments to URL Shortcuts by simply changing the way they are linked to from http://www.foo.org/shortcutname to http://www.foo.org/site/RedirectHandler?key=shortcutname. This is very useful for doing server-side redirects based on some defined logic rather than relying on Javascript, i.e. if you want a dropdown list where users choose a specific page/section to view.

Here's an example to try ...

Create a page called shortcut_form and insert the following in the HTML content (where foo.org is your Convio site's domain name):

<form action="http://www.foo.org/site/RedirectHandler?key=formpost" method="post">
     ]x::<p style="color: #ff0000;">Error: Please select a page to go to.</p>::]]
     <p><label  for="s_pageToGoTo">Page To Go To:</label><br />
     <select name="s_pageToGoTo" id="s_pageToGoTo">
          <option value="0" selected="selected"> </option>
          <option value="1">Page 1</option>
          <option value="2">Page 2</option>
     </select> 
     <input type="submit" id="pageToGoToSubmit" value="Go" /></p>
</form>

Then, create a URL Shortcut named formpost and insert this in the "Link to go to" field (note the line breaks are only used here for display and should be ommitted):

]x::http://www.foo.org/site/PageServer?pagename=shortcut_page1::
]x::http://www.foo.org/site/PageServer?pagename=shortcut_page2::
http://www.foo.org/site/PageServer?pagename=shortcut_form&error=pageToGoTo]]]]

View http://www.foo.org/site/PageServer?pagename=shortcut_form on the front-end. If you select 1 you will be taken to page 1 as defined in the URL Shortcut conditional, if you select 2 you'll be taken to page 2, etc. The final condition is used for error handling, so that in the case that the user does not indicate a response, they are taken back to the form and an error is displayed.

Note that the form does not need to be on a Convio-powered page to work (though of course the conditional statement for error-handling would have to be done differently on an external site), and the target URLs in the shortcut do not need to be Convio-powered pages.