ASP.NET MVC newbie question:
I've set up a MVC site, with a few controllers. Now my site also has a lot of content files, which are stored in a network of subfolders within my web site, and I need to be able to access them directly, e.g.
http://mydomain.com/Content/Images/Geography/Asia/Japan/TokyoAtNight.jpg
Is there a way to make this a direct pass-through to the content folder, as specified by the path, or do I have to make a Content controller that interprets the rest of the URL and returns the file as some kind of ActionResult? Bear in mind, of course, that there will be lots of different content types, not just JPEGs.
Thanks for your help!
This should work without you doing anything - static files are not processed by the routing engine.
You want to look into Routing, and IgnoreRoute specifically. Here are a couple of places to start.
Asp.Net Routing: How do I ignore multiple wildcard routes?
http://www.asp.net/mvc/tutorials/asp-net-mvc-routing-overview-cs
Take a look at the #Url.Content() helper method.
Url.Content("~Content/Images/Geography/Asia/Japan/TokyoAtNight.jpg")
Yes.
The IRouteHandler and the route registration in your global.asax is your extensibility point for configuring how MVC handles url paths.
However, by default ASP.NET MVC will allow you to access image files directly, without any additional configuration.
Related
I've got an image handler on my site which works on the url below. Obviously with being an asp.net httphandler it has the .ashx extension, even though it returns content with mime type image/jpeg
https://xxxxx/image.ashx?id=78164&imagelibraryid=0404fd0c-e681-4a5c-9899-f2709aaf7e0c
We want to use cloudflare for caching and serving images, but for it to work properly you have to use image urls with standard extensions i.e. jpg/gif/png etc.
Is there anyway my httphandler can detect and process any requests to image.jpeg?
Only image.jpeg should be handled by the httphandler, any other XXX.jpeg would still need to be served from the filesystem.
Is it possible?
Thanks
I think you have three options to allow you to serve the same images with a new url that looks like:
https://xxxxx/something-custom/images/78164/0404fd0c-e681-4a5c-9899-f2709aaf7e0c.jpg
Option one - use IIS rewrite rules to serve publically on one url that has proper extensions and rewrite the address inside the webserver so that the fragments get passed into the ashx handler.
Option two - use aspnet routing, originally designed for MVC, with a bunch of plumbing code to pass the data between the two paradigms, as detailed in this SO question
Option three - rewrite the code by moving it out of ashx into a new api controller as ashx handlers are a bit dated these days and mvc and model binding are often easier and more testable. Most of the core logic can probably be done quickly with lift and shift, and just use routing and mvc to map the new url fragments into variables consumed by your business logic.
I'm not sure the correct way to phrase what I'm trying to accomplish, and I'm definitely not a MVC expert. So, I'm not sure the best way to handle this. I feel like there should be a more elegant, MVC based approach than what I've thought of so far.
I have a site with a physical structure similar to the following:
www.example.com (web forms application)
-red (native folder in the parent web forms application)
-blue (mvc subapplication)
So, by default, urls would be like the following:
www.example.com/red/test.aspx
www.example.com/blue/controller/action
For some controllers, I need
www.example.com/blue/controller/action to instead have a publicly visible url at
www.example.com/green/controller/action
I have so far accomplished this with a rewrite rule in the parent/root website. However, the mvc subapplication doesn't natively understand that some requests live under a pseudo folder. So, when I render a form with html.BeginForm for pages requested at www.example.com/green/controller/action, it renders the form's action as /blue/controller/action. Other than outbound rewrite rules, is there someway to "teach" the mvc subapplication about a new root path for select controllers? Is there someway to configure some of this when registering routes on startup? Any other suggestions on the best way to handle this? Now, keep in mind, the rewrite from blue to green is not the entire subapplication. Some controllers will need to be rewritten to have a root of orange, etc.
Obviously, the use of colors is just an example. :-)
Areas in MVC would make things easier and more organized.
Refer to this for more info
Here is another useful link
I am doing a small ASP.NET 2.0. site refactoring.
Currently there is the following folder structure:
/siteroot/services/home/service1
/siteroot/services/home/service2
/siteroot/services/home/service3
...
all the folders (service1, 2, 3) contain an almost identical default.aspx, with the different content hardcoded into the web form declaration.
My idea is to create one service.aspx and serve custom page (with the same template) on a particular URL request.
My question is:
How can I redirect all request to ../services/home/service1,2,3 to one particular handler/aspx page?
Preferably not to have those folders in the project structure at all, but intercept a requests that are headed to them.
If you are able to implement ASP.NET 3.5 (runs on the 2.0 CLR), then Routing sounds perfect for what you need to achieve. With this you can intercept URLs based on a particular format and then route them through to a single page or handler. You won't need a folder structure for each of your services.
Here's a few links on how to get going with it in ASP.NET WebForms. It's pretty quick to implement:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd347546.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc668201%28v=VS.90%29.aspx
http://haacked.com/archive/2008/03/11/using-routing-with-webforms.aspx
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/10/13/url-routing-with-asp-net-4-web-forms-vs-2010-and-net-4-0-series.aspx
One way:
Create a custom handler class that implements IHttpModule
In Init(HttpApplication application), register a method for application.AuthorizeRequest
In this method, parse ((HttpApplication)sender).Request.Path as appropriate, using HttpContext.Current.RewritePath if necessary to point to a "real" service.aspx page.
Then register your custom handler in <system.webServer><modules>.
Another way is to use the MVC-style routing, which works without MVC just fine. Details are in the answer to the question here: custom URL Routing in asp.net.
Is it possible to modify the the routes (and thus the RouteTable) outside of the global.asax file, maybe in a controller? Is this even advisable?
My reason for asking has to do with IIS 6 and Integrated Mode not allowing for Request context calls. I'm implementing internationalization for a site and keeping track of the culture in the URL. The culture is originally read from a .config file and loaded as a route default. This file read is what ends up throwing the error (another few steps up the stack). I based this off the method described here.
You can access the routing table pretty much anywhere like so System.Web.Routing.RouteTable.Routes, have tested this from a controller and it worked fine.
In my research, I found 2 ways to do them.
Both required modifications to the Application_BeginRequest procedure in the Global.Asax, where you would run your code to do the actual URL mapping (mine was with a database view that contained all the friendly URLs and their mapped 'real' URLs). Now the trick is to get your requests run through the .NET engine without an aspx extension. The 2 ways I found are:
Run everything through the .NET engine with a wildcard application extension mapping.
Create a custom aspx error page and tell IIS to send 404's to it.
Now here's my question:
Is there any reason one of these are better to do than the other?
When playing around on my dev server, the first thing I noticed about #1 was it botched frontpage extensions, not a huge deal but that's how I'm used to connecting to my sites. Another issue I have with #1 is that even though my hosting company is lenient with me (as I'm their biggest client) and will consider doing things such as this, they are wary of any security risks it might present.
`#2 works great, but I just have this feeling it's not as efficient as #1. Am I just being delusional?
Thanks
I've used #2 in the past too.
It's more efficient because unlike the wildcard mapping, the ASP.NET engine doesn't need to 'process' requests for all the additional resources like image files, static HTML, CSS, Javascript etc.
Alternatively if you don't mind .aspx extension in your URL's you could use: http://myweb/app/idx.aspx/products/1 - that works fine.
Having said that, the real solution is using IIS 7, where the ASP.NET runtime is a fully fledged part of the IIS HTTP module stack.
If you have the latest version of IIS there is rewrite module for it - see here. If not there are free third party binaries you can use with older IIS (i.e. version 6) - I have used one that reads the rewrite rules from an .ini file and supports regular expression but I cant remember its name sorry (its possibly this). I'd recommend this over cheaping it out with the 404 page.
You have to map all requests through the ASP.NET engine. The way IIS processes requests is by the file extension. By default it only processes the .aspx, .ashx, etc extensions that are meant to only be processed by ASP.NET. The reason is it adds overhead to the processing of the request.
I wrote how to do it with IIS 6 a while back, http://professionalaspnet.com/archive/2007/07/27/Configure-IIS-for-Wildcard-Extensions-in-ASP.NET.aspx.
You are right in doing your mapping from the database. RegEx rewriting, like is used out of the box in MVC. This is because it more or less forces you to put the primary key in the URL and does not have a good way to map characters that are not allowed in URLs, like '.
Did you checked the ASP .Net MVC Framework? Using that framework all your URLs are automatically mapped to Controllers which could perform any desired action (including redirecting to other URLs or controllers). You could also set custom routes with custom parameters. If you don't have seen it yet, maybe it will worth the look.