Recently I needed to create valid urls for pages using javascript. Also this time I thought it must be some out-of-the-box code for that in SharePoint. The first thing I came up  was the “Add page” dialog.  I found that the actual dialog was in the _layouts virtual folder:

/\_layouts/15/CreatePublishingPageDialog.aspx
```Bingo, it does the validation in the client side. This is the responsible javascript function that resides directly in the page: \[sourcecode language="javascript"\] function UpdateUrl() { LoadTermContextInfo(); var hiddenPageUrlLabelExtensionClientId = "<%=hiddenPageUrlLabelExtension.ClientID%>"; var hiddenPageUrlLabelExtension = document.getElementById(hiddenPageUrlLabelExtensionClientId); var pageNamePreviewUrlLabelClientId = "<%=pageNamePreviewUrlLabel.ClientID%>"; var pageNamePreviewUrlLabel = document.getElementById(pageNamePreviewUrlLabelClientId); if( pageNamePreviewUrlLabel != null ) { var nameInputTextBoxClientId = "<%=nameInput.ClientID%>"; var nameInputTextBox = document.getElementById(nameInputTextBoxClientId); var allowSpaces = false; if( GetInnerText(hiddenPageUrlLabelExtension) != "" ) { var suggestUrlValue = ""; for (var i=0; i < nameInputTextBox.value.length; i++) { var currentChar = nameInputTextBox.value.charAt(i); if (IndexOfIllegalCharInUrlLeafName(currentChar) == -1 && !(currentChar == ' ' && allowSpaces == false) && currentChar != '.' && currentChar != '+') { suggestUrlValue += currentChar; } else if (currentChar == ' ' || currentChar == '+' || (currentChar == '.' && i > 0 && i < (nameInputTextBox.value.length - 1))) { suggestUrlValue += '-'; } } UpdatePreviewUrl( suggestUrlValue ); } else { if( g\_timerId != 0 ) { window.clearTimeout(g\_timerId); } g\_timerId = window.setTimeout(OnFriendlyUrlNameChanged, 500); } } } \[/sourcecode\] This function iterates through all the characters in the page url and removes the illegal characters. The space, plus sign and the dot become a hyphen. To determine if a character is illegal, it relies on another javascript function called: `IndexOfIllegalCharInUrlLeafName`. This function can be found in the init.js or init.debug.js: \[sourcecode language="javascript"\] function IndexOfIllegalCharInUrlLeafName(strLeafName) { for (var i = 0; i < strLeafName.length; i++) { var ch = strLeafName.charCodeAt(i); if (strLeafName.charAt(i) == '.' && (i == 0 || i == strLeafName.length - 1)) return i; if (ch < 160 && (strLeafName.charAt(i) == '/' || !LegalUrlChars\[ch\])) return i; } return -1; } \[/sourcecode\] This function checks a char against an array of all characters: `LegalUrlChars` from the same file: init.js. [![ill_002](https://sharepointkunskap.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/ill_002.png)](https://sharepointkunskap.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/ill_002.png) To use this UpdateUrl function, we have to remove the references to the fields from the Add Page Dialog. Of course, we won't overwrite this original function, we don't want to break the SharePoint OOB functionality. Here is how my new function looks like: \[sourcecode language="javascript"\] var takana = {}; function takana.updateUrl(url) { var allowSpaces = false; if( url ) { var suggestUrlValue = ""; var length = url.length; for (var i=0; i < length; i++) { var currentChar = url.charAt(i); if (IndexOfIllegalCharInUrlLeafName(currentChar) == -1 && !(currentChar == ' ' && allowSpaces == false) && currentChar != '.' && currentChar != '+') { suggestUrlValue += currentChar; } else if (currentChar == ' ' || currentChar == '+' || (currentChar == '.' && i > 0 && i < (nameInputTextBox.value.length - 1))) { suggestUrlValue += '-'; } } } } \[/sourcecode\]

#### Server Side

For those of you who want run this operation on the server, here is the code written in C#: \[sourcecode language="csharp"\] //" # % & \* : < > ? \\ / { } ~ | var illegalChars = @"\[""#%&\\\*:\\<\\>\\?\\\\\\/\\{\\}~\\|\]"; pageName = Regex.Replace(pageName, illegalChars, string.Empty); var punctuation = @"\[\\s\\.;\\+\]"; pageName = Regex.Replace(pageName, punctuation, "-"); //remove "--" pageName = Regex.Replace(pageName, @"\\-{2,}", "-"); pageName = string.Format("{0}.aspx", pageName); //do it like the built-in dialog, lower case pageName = pageName.ToLower(); \[/sourcecode\] Don't forget to leave a comment if you find this post useful.

## Comments from Wordpress.com


#### 
[Johannes Milling](http://discoveringsharepoint.wordpress.com "johannesmilling@hotmail.com") - <time datetime="2013-08-23 09:53:30">Aug 5, 2013</time>

Good post! :)
<hr />

I found an easy way to provision multiple pages. Create a module. Add an aspx.file (e.g. default.aspx). In the elements file define nodes for every page. Path should be the same for all pages, but the Url should be your destination page. The “default.aspx” (name doesn’t matter) can contain content, or just one @Page directive if Publishing feature is available:

<%@ Page Inherits="Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.TemplateRedirectionPage,Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing,Version=14.0.0.0,Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>
```In the Element.xml define all your pages: [![](https://sharepointkunskap.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/abunchofpages-elements.png "abunchofpages-elements")](https://sharepointkunskap.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/abunchofpages-elements.png) In every File node you can add webparts, here is an example:

<![CDATA[ Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.ContentEditorWebPart About cars Test None true Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet ]]>

Läser “SharePoint 2010 as a Development Platform”. Kan verkligen rekommendera den. Idag har jag förståt vad default.master och custom.master innebär. De pekar på de master-filer som är inställda på web-nivå. Så det är ingen idé att ändra DynamicMasterUrl i @Page-direktivet till sin egen (om du inte vill ha någon helt annan master än i resten av portalen).