We have legacy code to maintain and, to solve a specific customer customization problem, we want to route calls to some files to other files. That is, when the app calls a particular ASPX, it will end up hitting another ASPX.
If you call:
www.foo.com/admin/admin.aspx
It will actually hit:
www.foo.com/customizations/customer1/admin/admin.aspx
This is not a good design but this is legacy code. We just want to solve this.
We are using the System.Web.Routing framework to solve it. This works fine when you set RouteExistingFiles to true, except for static files (CSS, JavaScript and Images).
When I first tried it, it retrieved this error:
There is no build provider register for the extension '.css'.
So I did register a build provider in the web.config file for the .css extension. I used this build provider: PageBuilderProvider because someone recommended it in the internet.
It works! But the CSS is being served with text\html content type.
How do I achieve this?
TL;DR: I want to use routes in ASP.NET Web Forms to make a call for a specific CSS file to actually retrieve another one. A customer needs this for customization.
Try coding a HttpHandler. I had to do something similar but for PDF files, I coded a custom HttpHandler in the end - works very well. You can even set the content type in the HttpHandler code and have a pattern matched path the handler will be used for in the web.config. You can also configure it in web.config not to execute if the path does not point to an existing file e.g. so a 404 is returned without having to code that in the handler itself. I can't post my code (VB.NET) ATM because I'm using a tablet but google search for tutorials. You will also probably need to use the TransmitFile function to actually write out the css file. Is it a web forms project or web site? If its a web site there is a special way of registering the HttpHandler in the web.config.
Related
For whatever reason (ugh, just assume we have to), we have a JavaScript file and a CSS file without an extension in our ASP.NET MVC application. The JavaScript file is at path ~/Scripts/js and the CSS file is at ~/Styles/css. These are static files containing JS and CSS respectively, but without file extensions.
Right now, when I try to load the resources in a browser, I get a 404 for those two paths. What do I need to do to make my ASP.NET MVC application serve these extensionless files (and serve them with the correct MIME types)? Something in the web.config and mapping a particular URL pattern to the HTTP handler for static files, I'm guessing. Apparently my Googling skills are inadequate—forgive me.
I think esmoore68 probably has the best answer... but... if you don't want to do that, I wonder if you could declare the style (and the script) on the page (rather than reference the files), and maybe use labels on the pages where you need these, and actually open the files in code-behind, read them as text, then write them into the labels on the page load?
I haven't tried anything like that, specifically, but it seems like it would work.
If it does, maybe you could create a user control so you can just put that in all the pages, rather than repeating it every time.
I seen an ASP.NET application, in the URL is saying:
http://xxxxxxxxx/FILENAME.html?xxxx=xxx
How come it is html file? But not aspx file? How did they do it?
I heard from my manager that's an ASP.NET project he outsourced.
Sometime I seen people with their web page is ended in .html too, but obviously that is generated dynamically...
Files ending with .html are optional. These are static HTML-pages without any code-behind and can be included as part of any web application. They are not parsed and compiled by the server but rather just sent as good old predefined HTML.
You can also configure the web server so that it routes requests with different endings through the ASP.net rendering engine. This way you can keep the widely recognized ending .html and still have dynamic page generation.
The file extension is not necessarily tied to the execution engine. You can make ASP.NET process .aspx, .html, .htm, .bob, .foobar, .css, etc.
There are multiple of ways to do this:
In IIS manager, set the file extension mapping for .html to point to ASP.NET. If you're using MVC, you can handle this via routing.
Use a rewrite engine to map anything with a .htm* extension to .aspx
There are probably other ways, but these are the most direct.
Also, the .html extension doesn't mean that the file was dynamically generated.
You can use URL rewriting. There are a lot of different rewriters most popular being the URL rewrite module ( http://www.iis.net/download/urlrewrite ) and the built in (in ASP.NET 4.0) Routing Engine ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc668201.aspx ).
The URL Rewrite module is external to your application and it translates incoming URLs to regular .aspx URLs. You are responsible for generating the links with .html. It is good if you are adding it to an existing application.
The built in routing can generate urls based on routes and is configured in Global.asax (usually) with code.
Right click on the project.
Add new...
pick the HTML file type.
Some people prefer to use a different extension (or even none at all) in order to hide the technology used to develop the site.
Bear in mind that you would have to properly configure IIS to let the .net engine handle the .html file types.
I have created a HTTPModule. Session information is retrieved using PreRequestHandlerExecute. It is working well for aspx pages. But while loading css/js or any image files, Session is null.
I have gone through the link ASP.NET CSS file not loaded when adding HttpModule to web.config
But could not get the implementation.
Anyone has any idea about this?
I think you'll find that your static files are being handled by the StaticFileHandler and as such wouldn't fire off session events as the session won't be being activated for efficiency purposes.
You could configure IIS to pass static files through a different handler (the PageHandler for example) but really you'd need to know if that was required first. You haven't described why you want sessions to be available for static files.
So, I've created my wonderful winforms app that I want to unleash upon the world, and now I am trying to create a simple website to host some basic information and link to the setup file (msi installer file )....
I have a button on the asp.net page and the setup file setupApp.msi in same folder as the asp.net page. I am currently trying the following:
Response.Redirect("http://./SetupApp.msi");
But this best guess at what to do is not working. Is there something wrong with Mime types here? What do I need to put in the click event to allow users to download this file?
The path you are passing in to the method is not valid (there's no server name called ".").
You can pass in a relative path and it should work fine because ASP.NET will resolve the path:
Response.Redirect("SetupApp.msi")
Or if it's not in the same folder, try one of these:
Response.Redirect("../Downloads/SetupApp.msi")
Response.Redirect("~/SomeFolder/SetupApp.msi")
Keep in mind that you don't necessarily have to do the whole redirect at all. Instead of writing code in an ASPX file you could just have a link to your MSI:
Download my app!
I'm using a web deployment project in order to precompile my ASP.NET 3.5 web project. It creates a single extra DLL for the code in aspx and ascx files. And, for every aspx file there is a placeholder aspx file (empty) which needs to be copied to the server.
I'd like to simplify the deployment process. Is there a way (configuring the IIS site and adding some sort of http handlers etc.) to get rid of these aspx placeholders?
Also, I'd like to know if there is a way to get rid of the .compiled files in the bin folder. It would make the deployment process smoother.
Thanks!
I discovered it by myself. It is much easier than I thought (IIS 6.0):
In Internet Information Manager go to the property page of the site, then chose the tab "Home Directory" and click on the button "Configuration...".
Click "Edit..." for the .aspx ISAPI extension and uncheck "Verify that file exists". At this point, no aspx file is needed anymore.
Update
One important thing: I had to create an empty "default.aspx" file in the root of the application in order to allow the default document for requests like "http://www.example.com/" (without calling an aspx).
Update 2
Another very important thing: if you're using ASP.NET Ajax PageMethods, then you have to keep the aspx placeholder of that page. If you're omitting the file, a javascript 'PageMethods is undefined' error will be thrown on the browser.
IF it is possible, then it will require, at the least, the mapping in IIS of all possible requests to the asp.net engine. Not very difficult. Then, a HttpHandler should be possible to intercept all incoming requests. That handler should then be able to dynamically load compiled page classes and render them. You'd basically have a single engine DLL that serves page content.
But as you might have noticed from all the should's, it's not a simple thing to accomplish, and I doubt that it's really worth the trouble. What exactly is wrong with these placeholder files being present?